Holiday Grind

by Cleo Coyle

  I hit another knot of people and stepped around them. My timing couldn’t have been worse. I passed right by Dickie himself. He was conferring with a man whose designer suit couldn’t hide a cauliflower ear and a pockmarked face—the kind that would have been captioned “Known Associate” in a true-crime book.

  Both pairs of male eyes followed me through the crowd—damn this Santa Hooker outfit!

  Another mob of partygoers slowed me down, trying to maneuver their kids closer to Tucker’s show. I dodged right, then left. Finally free, I hit the deserted marble stairway. My black go-go boot heels clicked quickly on the stone. I didn’t get far before I heard heavy feet following. I glanced over my shoulder and saw what I’d dreaded—

  Known Associate was on my heels. “Wait, miss!” he called. “Mr. Celebratorio would like a word with you . . .”

  I reached the basement dressing room but didn’t go inside. I hadn’t seen another exit in there, and I didn’t want to get trapped. Instead I kept on going down a long, empty corridor. I could hear the man’s footsteps stalking me.

  When I turned the first corner, I found myself trapped in a dead-end hallway with locked doors. I spun around, ready to rush back to the main corridor. But Known Associate was already on me.

  “Will you stop running—” His big hands reaching, he lunged for me.

  The only weapon I had was this huge bag of promo candy. Remembering Esther’s brick, I swung the sack with all my might and smacked him right in the face! The bag burst open and the cellophane-wrapped goodies went flying everywhere. Some even pelted me. Peppermint blowback!

  The man stumbled and I raced past him. He yowled, turned to chase me, and slipped on the layer of cellophane that covered the polished floor. As gravity took him down, I turned the corner again, continuing down the long hallway until I saw a Fire Exit sign above a pair of wooden doors.

  By now, Known Associate was on his feet again and running toward me. I pushed through the double doors and spun around. Using my empty velvet sack, I quickly tied the door handles together. Then I bolted the few yards to the steel fire door. Behind me, I could hear Known Associate violently rattling the tied double doors.

  He can’t get through!

  An alarm sounded as I depressed the fire door bar and stumbled into the frigid December night. When the heavy door slammed behind me, I knew I was locked outside—and that was fine with me, because the only way I was going back into that crazy holiday bash was with an armed SWAT team!

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “HEY, little elf! I like your outfit!”

  “Are you coming from a Christmas party?”

  “Maybe she’s from the North Pole.”

  “You want a ride, sweet thing?”

  “I’ll give her a ride. A real nice ride!”

  The four men laughed. They were sitting in an SUV, keeping pace beside me on a dim, deserted stretch of Fortieth Street. At least three of them were sloppy drunk from some office party. Shivering in my flimsy red costume, I tightly folded my red velvet arms and quickened the pace of my black go-go boots.

  With Bryant Park Grill dark, and no other open restaurants or stores on this block, I’d struck out for the police station in Times Square. If I was lucky, I figured I’d encounter a cop or squad car on my way.

  So far, I wasn’t lucky.

  My cell phone, wallet, and even my spare change were presently locked inside the public library’s basement. There were no pedestrians on this sleepy street paralleling the snow-covered rectangle of Bryant Park, and the only car coming down Fortieth in the last three minutes was this big, black sport-utility vehicle filled with four office workers in their late twenties, most of whom were hammered, all of whom were making assumptions about my line of work—wrong assumptions.

  “Ask her how much,” one of them complained to the other.

  “What’s the matter, little elf? Don’t you like us?”

  Eyes forward, I shook my head. “Not interested!”

  “Come on!”

  They began talking lower, among themselves. “You have cash on you, right?”

  “What’s she going to charge?”

  I quickened my steps on the sidewalk, hurrying to reach the much brighter lights of Sixth Avenue, but the SUV continued keeping pace with me.

  “We’ll treat you right,” one of them shouted. “Just get in!”

  When I finally hit the corner, I figured I’d lose them. But the SUV turned sharply, cutting me off at the curb. The inebriated guy in the front passenger seat swung open his door and leaped at me—

  “Hands off, asshole!” I shouted, rearing back.

  WHOOP!

  The earsplitting burst of a police siren cut the night. A dark blue sedan peeled through the traffic light and spun with NASCAR-level rotational drift. In seconds, the sedan’s driver screeched his vehicle to a halt, expertly boxing in the front of the SUV.

  I noticed the revolving red bubble light on the sedan’s dashboard and sagged with relief. Sergeant Emmanuel Franco climbed out of his unmarked car, swaggered over to the men in the SUV, and flashed his gold shield. I was never so happy to see a red, white, and blue do-rag in all my life.

  “Now I ask you, gentlemen: Is that any way to treat Santa’s Little Helper?” His dark eyes speared the four. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. I ought to throw the book at you. Or maybe give your so-called designated driver a Breathalyzer.”

  The wolves turned suddenly sheepish.

  “We didn’t mean anything, officer.”

  “You’re misunderstanding.”

  “We all just thought she might want a lift.”

  “Yeah, that’s all—”

  “Listen, Jersey Boys,” Franco replied. “Put it back in your pants and go home—unless you’d rather spend the night in a holding cell instead of Lincoln Tunnel traffic.”

  While Franco stood and watched, the SUV backed up, laboriously maneuvered around his unmarked car, and sped away. Then the police sergeant turned to face me, gave my outfit a long, slow, frustratingly expressionless once-over, folded his arms, and said, “So, Coffee Lady, you want a ride or what?”

  “Yes!”

  Freezing, I ducked into the passenger side of his sedan. He got behind the wheel, shut the door, and glanced at me. Without a word, he turned up the heat.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Listen, Sergeant, inside the library, there was a man after me—”

  Franco put a palm in the air. “Give me a second.” He grabbed his police radio handset. “Dispatch, I have a possible DWI currently traveling north on Sixth Avenue. Issue a BOLO for a late-model black Ford Explorer, four occupants, with the following New Jersey license plate . . .”

  Franco finished his radio call and turned to me. “You were saying?”

  “Where’s Hong? I called Detective Hong.”

  “I know you did. He played me your phone message—several times.” Franco smirked. “When I heard the part about you dressing as Santa’s Little Helper, I said to Hong, ‘Charlie, this is one call I’ve gotta respond to.’ ”

  “Dressing like this was the only way I could get inside the Ticket to the North Pole party—”

  “I know, Coffee Lady. So . . .” Giving me another once-over, he arched an eyebrow. “You want to go to my place?”

  “No.”

  “I’m kidding. Where to?”

  “Take me to the East Village. I’ll fill you in as we go . . .”

  To Franco’s credit, he let me get out the whole story—from finding Karl Kovic’s corpse, to hearing an elf confess to possible accessory to murder, to braining one of Dickie Celebratorio’s Known Associates with a bag of gourmet chocolate-dipped candy canes. Dudley Do-Rag actually listened to the whole thing without once cracking wise. A Christmas miracle in itself.

  When we reached Mike Quinn’s apartment building, I still hadn’t finished the tale, so he pulled to the curb and kept the engine running to keep the car warm.

  �
�. . . and that’s when you found me,” I concluded.

  “I see,” Franco said. “And that’s it?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  He smiled. Not a smirk this time, but a real smile. “You’ve got a lot of guts, Coffee Lady, I’ll say that for you.”

  “I’m just trying to find out who really killed my friend.”

  “I know. And I have some good news. We recovered the murder weapon.”

  I sat up straighter. “The gun that shot Alf?”

  Franco nodded. “It was found in a Goodwill bin. Someone tossed it in there—by our calculation, the same night as the murder. We ran the serial numbers. The weapon was bought in North Carolina by a man who died two years ago.” At my look, Franco added, “That’s an MO for a weapon bought and sold illegally up here on the street.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  Franco shook his head. “Wiped clean.”

  I slumped in the car seat. “I guess you’re happy about that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because after all I’ve turned up, you can still pin this on some random street criminal, that’s why.”

  “Except I don’t believe that anymore.”

  “You don’t?”

  Franco turned to fully face me. “No street mugger would throw away something as valuable as a handgun. He might resell it in the ’hood or stash it in his crib until the heat from his crime cooled off, but toss something like that in a Goodwill bin? That’s as good as throwing away hundreds of dollars—the kind of a thing an amateur would do, thinking he or she was making a premeditated murder look like a random street crime.”

  I sat up straighter. “You’re on my side now?”

  Franco nodded. “I interviewed Shelly Glockner.”

  “I know. She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?”

  Franco laughed. “I’d peg her as coldhearted enough to do the deed or hire someone to do it, but then . . . it seems to me there are others who had a motive. You’ve stirred up a pretty gnarly nest of suspects.”

  Franco was right about that. Dickie was after me. But I knew he couldn’t have shot Karl—because Dickie had a solid alibi at the time Karl was killed (that VIP cocktail party he threw before the big Public Library event). I doubted Dickie pulled the trigger on Alf, either. Given what Franco had just told me about the murder weapon, I even doubted Alf’s killer was a professional Known Associate of Dickie’s. A professional assassin wouldn’t have made the mistake of getting rid of the gun in a manner the police would find suspicious. No, according to Shane Holliway, Dickie was just the go-between, someone who was helping some famous person, whom Karl was almost certainly blackmailing (according to Ben Tower). Which meant there was someone else out there, someone who wasn’t a pro, who was willing to pull the trigger—twice—for whatever it was Karl had stashed in his apartment.

  “I think the person who killed Alf was the same one who killed Karl,” I said. “Do you agree?”

  “Based on your investigation—yeah, I’d say it’s the same person. Keep in mind, though, whoever it was didn’t use the same gun.”

  “If only there were some way to get fingerprints after they were wiped!”

  “Actually, there is.”

  “What?”

  “Ever hear of John Bond?”

  “Don’t you mean James?”

  Franco shook his head. “John Bond is a scientific support manager at Northamptonshire Police and an honorary research fellow at the University of Leicester.”

  “Leicester, England?”

  “That’s right. He’s been working with American law enforcement to solve cold cases.”

  “How exactly?”

  “Bond’s developed a new procedure for detecting fingerprints. He coats a fine conducting powder, something like what you’d see in a photocopier, onto a metal surface and applies an electric charge. Then guess what? If the fingerprint has been wiped off or even washed off, it leaves a slight corrosion on the metal—which attracts the powder when the charge is applied and shows us a residual fingerprint.”

  “Are you telling me this Bond guy can find a fingerprint that’s been wiped off? That he can find out who handled Alf’s weapon?”

  Franco nodded. “The technique works on everything from bullet casings to machine guns. Even better if our killer likes junk food.”

  “Excuse me? Are you joking?”

  He smiled but assured me, “It’s no joke. Processed and pre-packaged foods put more salt into human sweat. Salty sweat helps the microscopic corrosion process.”

  I frowned at that, remembering Omar’s favorite lunch of Jamaican ackee and saltfish—his son’s messy SUV, all those empty bags of chips and snacks that Dwayne had swept into his father’s driveway . . .

  “Anyway, even if heat vaporizes normal clues, Bond can read the fingerprints of who handled the metal. I hear they’re going to try applying the technique to roadside bomb fragments in Afghanistan.”

  “I see. That’s really . . . amazing.”

  Franco smiled. “And you thought I was just another pretty face.”

  “No, Sergeant. What I thought was—I’m sorry, but I thought you might be the shooter, some kind of vigilante doling out street justice.”

  “I’m not all that surprised.” He shrugged. “I know you had your boyfriend ask around about me. Whether I was a good cop.”

  “And?”

  “And Mike Quinn got his answers. Ask him.”

  “I don’t need to, Sergeant. Not anymore.”

  Franco nodded, looking pleased. “So . . .” He glanced at Mike’s building. “Is your man up there?”

  “I don’t think so. Can I use your cell phone to call him?”

  Digging into his pocket, he smirked. “As long as it’s local . . .”

  QUINN was extremely relieved to hear from me. “I left five messages on your voice mail, sweetheart.”

  “I’m sorry, Mike, I didn’t have my cell phone with me—”

  “When I couldn’t reach you, I finally contacted Detective Hong. He filled me in. You should be pleased, Cosi.” I could hear the pride in Quinn’s tone. “Based on what you’ve uncovered, Hong is looking for evidence to link Alf’s killing with Karl’s. They might have come to that conclusion eventually, but you speeded up the process. And crimes have a much better chance of being solved when they’re—”

  “—hot, I know. What about Dickie?” I asked after recounting my adventures in the New York Public Library, including my candy cane tangle with the man’s Known Associate.

  “Hong’s already reached out to the Two-Oh on that—”

  “You mean the Twentieth Precinct, right?”

  “Right, sorry. That’s who caught the Kovic murder. They’re picking up Dickie right now for questioning. I’ll call Hong and let him know about the man who tried to assault you in the Public Library’s basement. If Dickie doesn’t give up a name, we’ll have you go through mug shots. The Twentieth Precinct house is on Eighty-second. I’ll take you myself tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay . . .” I sighed with relief and explained my current dilemma. “I’m sorry, Mike, but I don’t have a key with me to get into my place or yours.”

  He told me what to do and asked me to put Franco on the line.

  I did, thanking the sergeant again for his help, and then I climbed out of his unmarked car, punched in the front door code on Quinn’s building, and took the elevator up to Dr. Mel Billings’s apartment (a neighbor and coworker of Quinn’s who kept a spare key to his place).

  Mel let me into Quinn’s one-bedroom, and I locked the door behind me. Then I rang Tucker, left a message on his cell to take my handbag and clothes with him when he left the library, and headed straight into a hot shower.

  Toweling off, I heard the front door unlock and open. I smiled with relief, already feeling better because Mike was finally home. Using a small hand dryer, I took a few minutes to fluff up my chestnut hair. Then I sprayed on a bit of perfume, glossed my lips, wrapped a terrycloth robe around me, and b
egan swinging the bathroom door out toward the bedroom.

  “Hey, big boy! Guess who?”

  I froze at the sound of a strange woman’s singsong voice—and pushed the door the rest of the way open.

  Sitting on Mike’s king-size bed was a tall, slender, thirtysomething woman. Her most striking feature—a silky curtain of red curls—framed a delicately sculpted face with a complexion of flawless porcelain. A Mrs. Claus baby-doll nightie barely covered the woman’s long, slender torso. Her Rockette-length legs were crossed; her pretty feet manicured with holiday red polish; and the expression in her big, blue, doll-like eyes was one of pure shock.

  Okay, that made two of us in shock.

  “Who are you?” I demanded—and that’s when I remembered. This was the same Blend customer who’d been giving me nasty looks for the past week. I’d assumed she’d been holding a grudge because of our argument on the night of Alf’s murder. Obviously, I’d been wrong.

  “I’m Leila!” she now informed me. “Leila Quinn!”

  “Mike’s ex-wife!”

  I closed my eyes. Mike never wanted to talk about Leila. He displayed no photos of her, and I’d never pressed him for details. I thought I was letting the man heal, allowing him space from bad memories. Now I could see what that naive trust had wrought.

  Opening my eyes, I glared. “Why are you here?”

  “Excuse me,” she snapped, “why are you here?”

  “Mike invited me!”

  “Well, he invited me, too,” Leila said with a pout. “And you know what? Three’s a crowd!” She pointed to one of her wrists and, right in front of me, handcuffed herself to Mike’s bedpost!

  My God. Matt was right. He’d warned me that Quinn was seeing some redhead . . .

  “You know what, Leila?” I said. “Three is a crowd.”

  Hurt, humiliated, and so angry I couldn’t see straight, I moved to the drawer Quinn had set aside for me, yanked out jeans, a sweater, socks. I didn’t have shoes here, but the black go-go boots would do. I went back into the bathroom, dressed, and began to storm out.

  As I reached the front door, the man walked in.

  “Get out of my way, you son of a—”