Almost was not quite good enough. He wanted a guarantee of live airtime. He opened door to the foyer by a crack, just wide enough for him to be seen with a dead cell phone pressed to his ear. Oh, the ripple of excitement from the media was palpable. Only reporters and hyenas had ears that could stand at attention. “Go out there, Nancy. Tell them I’m talking to cops, getting breaking news on the case. Tell them it’s worth waiting for.”
—
“YOU DIDN’T KNOW any of those people,” said Iggy. “You didn’t care who got killed.”
“It didn’t matter.” Brox was having difficulty opening a fresh bottle of brandy. “The mayor was out of town for the first four murders. Out to sea. Even the police didn’t know that till—”
“But you knew.”
“Yes, and I took advantage of it. It’s all about pressure. You see, the fun didn’t really begin till you dumped those four bodies on the mayor’s lawn. That was like a billboard sign to bring out the cops, the reporters . . . all those cameras. All that lovely pressure on Polk.”
“Did you give him the kid’s heart?”
“All the hearts.” Brox continued to fiddle with the seal on the brandy bottle. “That last one? I popped it into a mailman’s bag. It sailed right past the cops on the avenue. And the mayor’s police bodyguards?” Brox snorted. “Everything sails past them.”
No, the police had that heart. How else could they have found the grave of the boy who used to own it? Iggy drained his beer and reached for another. “Let’s say the mayor gave the hearts and the ransom notes to the cops on day one—the day those bodies landed on the grass.”
“Well, then it would’ve been game over. But obviously he didn’t do that.”
Polk had probably done just that. “The cops gotta know you ordered those hits. Why ain’t you in jail? Tell me just one thing that makes sense.”
“The mayor knows who I am now, but he doesn’t want me caught.” Brox handed the brandy bottle to Iggy. “Do you mind?”
Iggy, sighed, pulled out his knife, and—click—a six-inch blade shot up from the handle. After slashing the seal and opening the bottle, he sloshed liquor into the idiot’s glass, priming the drunken pump. “So you got somethin’ on that bastard.”
“The mayor? Yes . . . and no. My father didn’t give up any sordid details before his . . . accident with dear old Mom. I was expecting a huge inheritance. You know what I got? A nondisclosure agreement and a long string of numbers for a bank account in the Cook Islands. You know what was left of the family fortune after losses in the market? A little over five percent!”
“Yeah, yeah. So you wanted money.” Iggy nodded, hardly paying attention anymore. He was stuck on the word accident and the little note of joy that Brox had attached to the death of his parents. “This ain’t your first time out with a hit man, is it, kid?” Oh, there was that smirk again. He was onto something. “When your folks had their accident, I bet you were a thousand miles away.”
“On a ski trip in Vail. And you’ll love this. . . . My bookie paid for it.”
Iggy could fill in the rest. Hiring a pro to murder rich parents—that would have been the bookmaker’s solution to a large debt left owing, one with damn little hope of payment by other means. And now Brox had implicated that bookie in a double murder for hire. So easily, too. And this moron was not done yet.
“It was a car crash in Vermont. My parents had a getaway cabin up there. It appeared that my father fell asleep at the wheel. That bit of speculation was in the police report. His chest was crushed when his car went off the road to hit a tree. Clearly dead on impact. That tended to knock his other heirs out of the running for the estate. You see, the old man had four children from a previous marriage. But Mom only had me. There was no doubt that she outlived him. Her body was found ten feet from the wreck. Thrown clear. That’s what the police said. Legs broken. No chance of being heard from the road. She lasted nearly three days with no food or water. . . . Sound familiar?”
“That’s where you got the idea to keep those people alive for—”
“Yes, professional methods. Your profession. I’d thought you’d appreciate that touch. When you dumped those bodies, it had to be clear that those people were kidnapped one by one. Held for days—well, obviously held for ransom. Even the idiot cops could see that much.”
Iggy had a better opinion of the NYPD. And this sick little bastard sitting beside him was just too stupid to live.
Brox drained his glass. “Satisfied?”
No! But Iggy’s voice was amiable, casual when he asked, “So who was your partner—your inside man?”
“My what?”
“You knew the mayor was out of town for the first four kills. Even the cops didn’t know that. And that little back gate in the brick wall—you called it the mayor’s hooker entrance. I read the gossip columns, kid. The mayor’s pretty damn discreet about his whores. Not one line about ’em in print or on the Net. Then there’s the cop at the front gate on the avenue. You said he’d be nappin’ that night, and he was. Nobody watchin’ the cameras go dark. What for? The mayor’s outta town—like you said. So you got a partner on the inside.”
“Oh, I see. That flake . . . he’s not my partner. The dweeb only lives to impress people. Give him a drink and a pat on the head, he’ll talk you to death. There’s bartenders all over town who probably have the same inside information. He loves to bang on about the mayor’s inner circle.”
“I need a name for that guy.” Iggy wanted all the details of this game that had cost him a house and a Jaguar.
“Your job is done. You got paid. Now it’s been fun, but I’m off to bed. So finish your beer and—”
“First I gotta take a piss.” And then the fun would begin. He was owed an EXPLANATION!
—
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY Joseph Walton was in a bad temper. Riker would describe it as a hissy fit. When this lawyer had failed to return every phone call, uniformed officers had escorted him out of bed and into the station house, and now he sat in the interrogation room.
“This is going to cost you,” said Walton in a squawk of menace.
“Check this out.” Mallory pushed the Tech Support file across the table. “The voice print analysis was solid. Dwayne Brox hired the murders of five people.”
“Fine. The arrest can wait till morning.” Walton made a show of yawning. “It’s a bit late to wake up a judge.” His eyes turned sly. “It’s a pity you can’t drag Mr. Brox in here one more time, not without an arrest warrant. I trust that your boss received a copy of the harassment charges and the injunction? There’s a photo of the ham sandwich attached to the paperwork. That little screwup of yours went over so well with the judge. . . . What’re the odds he’ll put any faith in your voice analysis?” The lawyer lightly slapped the tabletop. “So we’re done here. For now, the guard on Brox’s door is all that’s allowed. You two can’t get within a hundred yards of that man.” His chair pushed back. “Well, then . . . till tomorrow.” Walton stood up, all too ready to leave them.
“Sit!” Riker rose from the table, the smaller man sank down—surprised. “A hit man’s going off the rails. He’s cleanin’ up his tracks, and he racked up more victims today. So either we arrest Brox right now or he dies, too.”
“You’re being melodramatic. The guards on Brox’s—”
“If a pro wants to get you,” said Mallory, “he gets you.”
“I don’t care. And don’t try going behind my back one more time. I know how you got your search warrants. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
“You weasel.” Riker banged a fist on the table. “That’s why you don’t take our calls? ’Cause we left you out of the loop on a few warrants?” And now he understood why no one else in the DA’s Office would return messages tonight. This little bastard was on a get-even mission to poison every other avenue for a—
�
�Let’s call it a lesson,” said Walton. “You two have to learn not to fuck with me. And the DA won’t help you, either. I can promise you that old fool won’t give a shit if Dwayne Brox lives or dies tonight. Now if Brox does die . . . well, that’s all on you.”
“Payback?” Mallory turned around to face the one-way glass. “Play that last bit for me?”
And the ADA’s last lines came back to him over the intercom. “You can’t record me in a—”
“Sure we can,” said Mallory. “If we charge you with collusion and obstruction. You’re Samuel Tucker’s mole in the DA’s Office.”
Riker slapped a sheet of paper on the table. “Phone records. Yours. Tucker’s. You were the inside man. But now you’re just a complication. And that might land you on a hit man’s list.”
“I know you made ours,” said Mallory, “after we talked to Tucker.”
And now it was Riker’s turn to lie. “He’s resting up in a holding cell.” The detective opened his laptop. “I guess we were too hard on him.” The computer was turned around so the ADA could view a soundless film of Janos’s days-old interview with the mayor’s aide, replete with a shine of sweat on Samuel Tucker’s face. This video should have been destroyed along with everything else connected to the aide’s bogus arrest and the purloined SEC document, but Mallory was not inclined to waste anything. Without a sound track, this old conversation did look more interesting—and incriminating. Bug-eyed Joe Walton apparently thought so. His chair inched back to the wall.
“We can’t get you arraigned tonight,” said Mallory, “but we have a nice little cot downstairs in the lockup . . . if we decide to charge you. So you get one phone call. What’ll it be?”
ADA Walton decided, to no one’s surprise, on using his call to wake up a judge for an arrest warrant on Dwayne Brox.
—
WHEN THIS WAS OVER, Iggy Conroy planned to sleep for days and days. He watched the water rising in the tub as he set a half-empty bottle of brandy on the floor of Dwayne Brox’s bathroom.
Clothes or no clothes? Naked worked better. The necessary knock to the head would leave a bruise that worked with the finding of a bathtub fall. Amateurs who held their victims down while drowning them always left telltale marks on the flesh, bruising that would show up hours after death. But medical examiners rarely questioned the bop-and-drops that left only scalp wounds.
A cell phone beeped in his shirt pocket. The cop who owned it was about to miss this check-in call, and soon, a patrol car would be sent to find him. But before that happened, the cop on the roof would get a call—and so would the one parked outside Brox’s door. No sweat with those two. Right now they were probably telling their sergeant that everything was A-okay.
He could count on ten minutes before patrolmen came looking for the downstairs cop, the half-naked guy asleep in a refrigerator carton. Iggy could allow a few minutes more for the search of the storage area—the ride up here in the elevator. And a bathtub drowning? That could take three or four minutes.
Yeah, he was good for the timing.
From the living room, he heard Dwayne Brox yell, “You screwed me!” Iggy left the bathroom on the run, and he found Brox standing in front of the TV set, weaving and red-faced.
“Shut your mouth!” Iggy glanced at the wide-screen image, a close-up of the mayor, who was answering questions shouted by reporters.
“Yes, the boy’s going to be in the hospital for a few days.” In response to another reporter, Polk said, “No, Jonah’s had a rough time of it. He’s under sedation, so he won’t be making a statement to the police until tomorrow morning.”
No, no, no! Iggy wanted to rip the TV off the wall.
Brox shouted, “That kid’s still alive! You fucking screwed me!”
With one tap, not even all that hard, Iggy laid him out on the floor. Glass-jawed little shit. “I told you to shut up.”
Another loose end. Every time he tied one off, another one—
Brox was rising from the floor. This idiot did not know when to be afraid. And before he could open his mouth one more time, Iggy stomped on his gut, and that shut him up. Hard to breathe, Dwayne? Oh, yeah.
Iggy gripped Brox’s ankles and dragged him down the hall. “Take little breaths, nice and easy, okay? You’ll be fine.”
Just keep breathing.
There had to be water sucked into the lungs.
—
THERE WAS A KNOCK at the door and a voice in the hall. “Everything okay in there?”
“Yeah, yeah.” With minutes to spare and water marks blending into his dark uniform, Iggy opened the front door, never breaking stride as he walked past the surprised police officer, saying, “I covered your ass. Don’t leave your post one more time. Hear me?” He continued down the hall, assured that the cop was buying him as a brother in NYPD blue. Iggy stopped before the elevator. In sidelong vision, he saw the cop unfolding a sheet of paper. The man reached for his weapon, but before it cleared the holster, his other hand went to the shoulder where the medi-dart was lodged.
The dart gun was back in Iggy’s pocket before the cop’s legs failed him, and now the man hit the floor. Paralyzed. The sheet of paper lay beside him. Iggy hunkered down for a closer look. It was a bad drawing of himself in leaner, hairier days, but he thought the sketchy portrait had gotten the eyes right.
—
THE MAYOR’S PRESS CONFERENCE had been played and replayed on every channel. The lieutenant muted his office television. “That was cold.”
“I’d call it murder,” said Mallory. “It’s like Polk took out a contract to kill that boy.”
“At least he didn’t mention the name of the hospital. That gives Jonah a sporting chance to make it through the night.” Jack Coffey had been left on hold, his landline receiver pressed against one ear, and now he resumed his conversation with the commander of the Upper East Side precinct. Mallory was moving toward the door when he yelled, “Goddammit!” and she stopped, as if this might be her other name.
He said to the man on the line, “Greg, I know you guys got the damn picture! Why didn’t you circulate it?”
The irritated uptown commander transferred Coffey’s call to the man in charge of the hospital detail. Sergeant Murray picked up on the first ring with a surly, “Speak!” That word was packed with warning. The caller had better state his business real fast because the sergeant was one damn busy man tonight.
Coffey identified himself and said, “You don’t have an updated picture of the perp. So tell your guys to be on the lookout for a cop they don’t know. He might be wearing an NYPD uniform, and—”
“Count on it,” said Murray. “I did ’cause . . . like I told your guys, he was wearin’ one when he dumped those bodies on the mayor’s lawn.” The sergeant waited a beat, maybe daring the lieutenant to say one more word. “So . . . I got this covered, okay?” And the slammed-down phone said, Call me back—and I’ll put you on hold for twenty years.
Oh, crap and miscommunication. With computerized scissors, Mallory had removed the long haircut from Ignatius Conroy’s high-school yearbook picture, and the face had been aged to give every cop in the city a decent likeness. All that time and effort wasted. The killer might have strolled past dozens of uniforms tonight.
The lieutenant checked his watch. Janos and Washington should be at Dwayne Brox’s place by now. He swiveled his chair to face Mallory. “You and Riker get over to Gracie Mansion. I’ll deal with the hospital.”
When she was out the door and gone, he phoned the guard on the boy’s hospital room, a young cop from his own station house, and he said to Officer Devon, “Check on him. Do it now.”
“I just did, sir. He’s fine. And there’s local uniforms on the street outside, maybe five guys out front. More in the back.”
Outside? Not inside where they belonged? Only one hospital in the city would have a visible police presence on the
street tonight. “You mean they like . . . hung out a sign?” Oh, yes indeed. A public show of uniformed cops, well, that was as good as a light left burning in the window to welcome a hit man.
—
IGGY CONROY drove the streets with a powered-up laptop on the passenger seat of his van. He had downloaded locations of more than twenty hospitals, and that was just freaking Manhattan. If the kid had been taken to another borough, this drive could last past sunup and land him in rush-hour traffic.
The list had been chopped by dropping small clinics and specialty shops for eye, ear, nose and throat, but that did not pare this night down to anything manageable. He was hemorrhaging time, though all he needed was a slow drive-by for every medical center. He would know the place when he saw it. The media had snitches everywhere, hospitals, too. Reporters always knew where the story was.
And there they were.
Double-parked news-show vehicles shared the street with patrol cars. Iggy rolled past them to park on the next block. He walked back to the hospital with no hurry to his steps, ambling along like any other cop reporting for duty. Getting past the five men guarding the entrance was no trouble. They were undermanned, fending off the media and checking IDs for staff and visitors. Iggy’s stolen uniform blended in well with the chaos of cops in shouting matches with civilians, trading obscenities shot for shot. None of them gave Iggy a glance as he backed through a glass door, and no one in the lobby thought to question his right to enter a stairwell door that was marked DO NOT ENTER.
He climbed to the second floor, where all was quiet at the nurses’ station. No police in sight. He walked every corridor seeking a cop on guard duty to mark the boy’s room for him. Iggy planned an easy suffocation. Jonah would freak out, but not for long. Three minutes tops. Respiratory failure would fit nice with smoke inhalation. But there were no cops on this floor.
All those uniforms outside—it was like they expected a hit on the kid, but why? The police should have closed out all the murders when they found the drug dealer’s body in the burning bed back at the house. In Iggy’s experience of staging fatal accidents, they should have gone for the easy close. He should be dead to police on both sides of the bridge. He pushed through the stairwell door and climbed to the third floor, when he stopped to sag against the wall.
Blind Sight Page 34
