The Kills

by Fairstein, Linda

  Laura opened the door. “Were you expecting anyone from the FBI?”

  “No.”

  “Two agents here. Say they need to interview you.”

  I waved them in. An attractive young woman in a smart gray pinstriped suit was accompanied by an older man. He looked like a central casting hire for a federal agent, while she looked like she had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.

  “Claire Chesnutt,” she said, extending a hand to each of us and palming her identification for us to examine. “This is my partner, Art Bandor.”

  Chesnutt explained that they were assigned to try to identify the man impersonating the late Harry Strait, and needed to interview me about him.

  “I don’t know very much.”

  “We understand that. If you don’t mind, it would be important if we separate you two for this conversation. You saw him, too, didn’t you?” she said to Chapman.

  “Let’s go into the conference room,” I said to her. “Mike can use my phone while he’s waiting his turn.”

  I walked Chesnutt and her silent partner back across the hall and told them everything I could remember about my conversation with Paige Vallis.

  “Did she tell you how she met the man who called himself Strait?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever show her any ID?”

  “I have no idea. Not that she mentioned to me.”

  “Why did she believe he was CIA?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Chesnutt. “I never had the opportunity to explore these questions with her.”

  What the agent wanted most was a physical description. I closed my eyes to try to re-create the visual of the man I had seen in the rear of the courtroom. I was giving a description of the generic white male of average height and build. “Again, I apologize. Somehow it’s always so embarrassing to be on the reverse side of this process.”

  Chesnutt had a nice manner. “I know you didn’t have much of an opportunity to make an observation. You don’t need to explain.”

  “How much of a problem is this identify-theft stuff?”

  “It’s becoming a bigger and bigger issue for us, since the Internet has made it so much easier to do, but it’s been around forever. Used to be, people checked cemetery headstones for birth and death information, then created documents to go with the name of someone who was dead and buried. Now we get guys hacking into files or accounts on-line, getting everything from social security numbers to credit card information. They don’t even have to leave home to do it.”

  “Why Harry Strait?” I asked. “What kind of work did he do for the CIA?”

  Chesnutt smiled at me. “Frankly, I don’t know.”

  Even if she did, she certainly would not have told me.

  “Has someone tried to impersonate him before this?”

  “Unfortunately, Ms. Cooper, I’m here to ask questions. Not answer them.”

  I took her card, in case I remembered any other details, and switched places with Mike Chapman.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” Laura said. “Battaglia wants you.” Scooping up the phone messages from her desk, I kept on walking, into the executive wing. Rose Malone signaled me straight in to the Boss.

  “Sit down,” he said, removing the cigar from his mouth. “First thing I want to know is how you’re handling this. The girl’s death, I mean.”

  Battaglia’s exterior was ironclad. It was rare he engaged in a conversation about emotions, but he was keenly aware of the personal toll this job could take when a tragedy hit close to home. Occasionally, when I needed it most, he responded with a question or piece of advice that suggested he knew exactly the depth of my own turmoil.

  “Maybe I’ll stop second-guessing myself in a couple of weeks. Right now it’s tearing my guts out. Paige Vallis’s death, the prospects of the boy’s future-it’s all ugly. You get anything for me?”

  “Promise me you’ll watch out for yourself, Alex. When this is resolved in a week or two, take some real time off and-”

  “I’ve just had a two-week vacation, Paul.”

  “Hardly. Prepping for trial. Why don’t you and Jake get out of town for a while?”

  I nodded my head. Battaglia had such a sixth sense about people, and now I knew he was fishing to see whether our relationship had stabilized, to check on whether I was getting the appropriate support on the home front. “Good idea, boss. You hear back from the DA in Virginia?”

  The cigar was wedged back in place, and the conversation was carried on out of the other side of Battaglia’s mouth. “No question that case file his assistant sent you was whitewashed. National security and all that bullshit. You wonder how some of these guys get elected in the first place.”

  He looked down at notes he had scribbled during a telephone conversation with the prosecutor about the burglary case during which Paige Vallis had confronted the intruder in her father’s house.

  “Let’s see,” he went on. “The man who was killed was named Ibrahim Nassan.”

  “The cops told me that Saturday night.”

  “Egyptian-born. Twenty-eight years old. Been in the States less than two years.”

  “Was he really al Qaeda?”

  “He spent some time in one of the training camps. Only way they know is that they searched his apartment after his death. Rented a single room in a boardinghouse in Washington. Pretty bare, except for a computer. Found some e-mails that connected him to some other known terrorists, but nothing to indicate active involvement in any trouble here in the States.”

  “Any family?”

  “No,” Battaglia said. “One of those kids who came from an upper-class background. Parents were merchants, father was educated at Oxford. Rebelled somewhere along the way, for no obvious reason.”

  “So, this intrusion into Paige’s father’s house is really linked to the work Mr. Vallis was doing for the CIA?”

  “Well, they never established that, either. An educated guess. You know nothing was taken during the burglary, right?”

  “Yeah, ‘cause the perp never got out of the house,” I said. “Do they know what he was looking for?”

  “They claim not to have any idea.” Battaglia shuffled his notes and kept reading. “Victor Vallis. Career Foreign Service. Sounds like he’d been posted all over Europe and the Middle East.”

  “He was in Cairo, right? I know Paige had talked about that.”

  “Yes. Twice, actually.”

  “Any connection to the CIA?” I asked.

  “They haven’t made any so far.”

  “When was Vallis there? In Egypt, I mean.”

  “Where’s Chapman? His military history might come in handy for this,” Battaglia said, referring to his papers.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him you said so. He’s in my office.”

  “The second time Victor Vallis was in Cairo was from 1950 to 1954. That covers the period of the coup, when the king was deposed and General Nasser took control of the Egyptian government.”

  “The king?”

  “Farouk. The last king of Egypt.”

  “What was Vallis’s position at the time?” I asked.

  “Political advisor to the American delegation. Still pretty junior.”

  “How about the first time he was stationed there?”

  “In the mid 1930s. Probably his entry-level job after college,” Battaglia said. “But he wasn’t working for the government then.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was a tutor. The royal tutor. You’re too young to know anything about Farouk,” the district attorney told me. “He was the playboy pasha-a spoiled prince who grew up to be a corrupt monarch and a Nazi sympathizer. I hated his politics.”

  “And Victor Vallis taught him?”

  “For almost three years, when young Farouk was living in the palace in Alexandria, and later in Cairo; Vallis made his home with the family and taught the prince all his studies. Foreign languages, world history, geography.”

  “So did th
e district attorney ever get any closer to figuring out what the feds thought this burglary was about?” I asked. “Foreign intrigue? Terrorism?”

  “He says the file was still an open case. Nobody knows. They looked for connections between Victor Vallis and the Nassan family, but if the CIA knew of any, they sure didn’t tell the local prosecutor.”

  “Thanks for making the call,” I said, as he handed me his notes of the conversation. “I’ll have Laura type these up.”

  I headed back across the main corridor to my office, where Chapman was talking with my assistant, Sarah Brenner. “Are the FBI agents gone?”

  “Yeah,” Mike answered.

  “Talk about feeling stupid. Were you able to give Ms. Chesnutt a ‘scrip of Harry Strait?”

  “Not a very good one,” he said, repeating it to me.

  “Doesn’t sound any better than mine.”

  Sarah had a different perspective. “Sounded to me like you were describing Peter Robelon.”

  “Or the defendant, Andrew Tripping,” I said. “Totally fungible white men. They’re not going to get very far on what I told them.”

  “Well, forget about Harry Strait for the moment and come on down to my office. I was just telling Mike that uniformed cops brought in an acquaintance of Queenie Ransome’s you need to talk to.”

  “Kevin Bessemer?” I asked.

  “Not quite so lucky as that. But I think you’ll want to question this guy.”

  “Where’d they find him?”

  “Inside Ransome’s apartment earlier today.”

  “A breakin?” Mike asked.

  “No. That’s what makes it so interesting. He let himself in with a key.”

  20

  “Is he under arrest?” I asked the cop who was standing outside the door of Sarah’s office, guarding the wiry young man who sat inside.

  “Not exactly. We didn’t know what to charge him with.”

  “Burglary?”

  “He’s got a key, ma’am. Says he knows the tenant.”

  “The tenant’s dead.”

  “Yeah, but he claims she gave him permission to be in the apartment.”

  “Not lately, I don’t imagine,” I said.

  “That’s why we brought him down here. You guys can decide whether or not to charge him.”

  “Was the crime scene tape still over the door?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He just lifted it and went inside, apparently.”

  “Didn’t your sergeant think that’s enough for a trespass?”

  “He says the city don’t pay him to think. That’s why they got lawyers.”

  I waited for Chapman and then entered Sarah’s small office. “My name is Alexandra Cooper,” I said. “This is Mike Chapman. He’s a detective and I’m an assistant district attorney.”

  “I’m Spike Logan.” He had been resting his head on his crossed arms, on a corner of Sarah’s desk. He stretched and yawned. “Wanna tell me what this is about?”

  “Happy to,” Mike said. “Then we got a few questions for you.”

  “Am I in custody?”

  Mike looked to me for a decision.

  “No,” I said.

  “Or do you mean not yet?” Logan said. “I’m free to leave?” He stood up, as though to challenge my response.

  I stepped back to let him pass.

  “That’s fair,” he said, reseating himself.

  “We’d like to talk to you about McQueen Ransome,” I said, “maybe starting with what you were doing in her apartment this morning.”

  “She invited me there. I had an appointment with her. Eleven o’clock.”

  “What kind of appointment and when did you make it?”

  “Every third Monday of the month. Been doing it since the beginning of the year. Look, these cops told me Queenie’s dead. Somebody killed her. I’ve probably got more questions for you than you’ve got for me.”

  Mike pulled two chairs from the anteroom outside Sarah’s office and we settled in for our conversation with Spike Logan. I couldn’t fathom why Queenie would have any standing engagements to meet with young men in her home, but Mike was ready to take over the questioning from me.

  “You saying you didn’t know Ms. Ransome was dead when you went in there today?”

  “Uh-uh. Nope. I haven’t been in town since last month. Just drove in last night. You gotta tell me what happened to her, man.”

  “Didn’t you see the tape outside her door?” I asked.

  “Lady, crime scene tape on a stoop in Harlem ain’t quite the odd thing it might be on the front steps in Beverly Hills.”

  “Let’s back up a bit,” Mike said. “Why don’t you tell us about yourself? Who you are, how you know Ms. Ransome, what the purpose of these meetings were.”

  Logan leaned back and stretched his legs in front of him. Lean and slight, he was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He was a dark-skinned black man, with a mustache and goatee, dark-framed eyeglasses, and several piercings in both ears.

  “Me? I’m thirty years old. Born here in the city, went to Martin Luther King High School. College at NYU. I’m in graduate school now.”

  “Where?”

  “Harvard. African-American studies program.”

  “You got any ID on you?”

  “It’s in my car, uptown. In the glove compartment. Just my driver’s license.”

  “No student ID?”

  “I’m not enrolled this semester. I’m on leave.”

  “Where do you live? Where’d you come in from last night?”

  “Massachusetts. Oak Bluffs.”

  Logan must have noticed my reaction. I looked over at Mike to see whether the name had registered with him. Oak Bluffs was one of the six towns on Martha’s Vineyard. It had an unusual history, and for more than a century had been a summer community and home to an African-American population of professionals, scholars, and intellectuals.

  “Who do you live with?”

  “Alone. It’s my uncle’s home. I’m house-sitting for the winter.”

  “Ever been arrested?”

  Logan hesitated for a moment, looking back and forth between Mike and me. “Couple of times.”

  “What for?”

  “Protests, demonstrations on campus. You’re gonna run me anyway, right?”

  “Bank on it.”

  “Once for robbery. But it was mistaken identity. The prosecutor in Boston dismissed the case. My lawyer told me I was allowed to answer no if cops ever asked whether I was arrested for that charge, ‘cause it was supposedly wiped off my record. I’m just telling you in case it shows up, so you know I didn’t try to lie.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Five, six years. No trouble since then.”

  “How do you support yourself?”

  “I’ve got a fellowship for grad school.”

  “You just told me you’re not there this semester.”

  “Yeah, well, my mother helps me out. I’ve got no rent to pay and some money I’ve saved up from my last job. Don’t be getting hostile now, bro. I may be the only friend Queenie had,” Logan said, pointing a finger at Mike and pushing himself up in his chair.

  “How’d you meet her?”

  Logan folded his arms across his chest and looked at the ceiling. “It was sometime late last fall. I’d been doing a research project up at school. My father was killed in a car accident about twenty years ago, and I always had this idea to go back and trace the history of his family. How his grandfather came up North, got educated, started his own business. Just find out everything I could about the man and the people I came from.

  “So I’m doing all this stuff in the archives at the Schomburg Center,” Logan said, referring to the research facility for black culture on Malcolm X Boulevard. “They had lots of documents about my grandparents, and photographs from the schools and clubs and professional societies in Harlem, with my father and some of his kin in ‘em.”

  “You related to Queenie?”

  “I kind of wished I was
after I met her. I tried to find people who used to know my dad. My mom had all these pictures of him as a little boy, before they hooked up. In a lot of the shots he was with another kid she said was his best friend. Looked like a little white boy. On the back of the pictures was the other kid’s name, Fabian Ransome.”

  I thought of the photo we had seen in Queenie’s apartment, in which she had posed with her child. Mike had learned from neighborhood talk that her son had died before his tenth birthday.

  “I always wanted to meet the boy in the photographs-Fabian. Find out about my dad’s childhood from him. So at the Schomburg, I came across these clippings from the 1940s and 1950s, with pictures of McQueen Ransome. Her name caught my attention, and four or five of her photographs had Fabian in them, too. I recognized him from my dad’s album.”

  “How’d you locate her?”

  “Pounding the pavement,” he said. “She wasn’t listed in the book, and there weren’t many people around who remembered her from her glory days, but I eventually got word of the old lady who liked to dance for the kids who ran her errands.”

  “What’d she do when you showed up at her door?”

  Logan smiled and stroked at his goatee with his hand. “Man, she just came alive. I think she was so hungry for a bit of family, so happy to have a connection to her son, she just embraced me like I was her own blood.”

  “She remembered your father?”

  “Told me the best stories about him. Things I never would have known if I hadn’t come across her. I’d drive down here from the Vineyard once a month, she’d put the music on-wouldn’t have none of my tapes or CDs, just her old vinyl. I’d bring her favorite things-gumbo, rice and beans, monkey bread, key lime pie. We’d go on talking for hours, then she’d heat up the food and we’d have a long meal with more conversating, as she liked to call it.”

  “You write your paper? Your family history?” Mike asked. “Is it something we can get a copy of?”

  “The one about my father? I never finished it. Queenie got me off on a tangent.”

  “About what?”

  Logan looked at Mike. “I fell in love.”

  “With?”

  “With her, man,” Logan said, sitting back and slapping his knees with both hands. “These meetings? I convinced her to do a history with me. An oral history for the Schomburg, and then I could use some of it for my dissertation at school. Not her personal stuff-but things I learned that related to my own family-”