“I’m not going to the hospital,” she said.
“You sure?” I said. “It sounds like Spence got hurt pretty bad.”
“Drive,” she said.
“Look, I can handle O’Keefe’s sister on my own. You go check on Spence, and then we can catch up after you—”
“Zach, Spence didn’t just fall. He was so high on painkillers he couldn’t see straight, and this time he destroyed thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and put his life and the lives of others at risk. Spence has a problem, and my going to the hospital to hold his hand is not going to help it. I told you this on Monday, and I’ll say it again. This is the best damn job in NYPD, and I’m not going to screw it up because of my drug addict husband. Now do me a favor.”
“Anything. What?”
“Shut up and drive.”
I shut up, pulled back onto the highway, and drove up the ramp for the bridge to New Jersey.
Chapter 49
Driving onto Harold Avenue in Leonia, New Jersey, you’d never know that this anonymous little patch of suburbia was a powder keg that would explode all over the next news cycle.
A black van was parked in the driveway of the last house on the left. It was pulled in tight against a clump of high hedges so that the gold letters that spelled out NYPD Crime Scene Unit on the side panel were out of sight.
Our old friend Chuck Dryden looked up when he heard our car approach, and instead of burying his nose back in his work, he walked down the driveway to greet us.
“Detectives,” he said with an uncharacteristic smile. “We meet again.”
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Kylie said. “There are no bodies to slice and dice.”
“Ah, Detective MacDonald,” he said. “I realize you think of me as a people person, but I have other talents you may not yet be aware of.”
Kylie laughed as if it were funny instead of downright creepy.
“I’ve been told to sweep the place and make a hasty retreat,” Dryden said. “I’ll have a prelim for you in five minutes. The sister is inside.”
Elizabeth O’Keefe, a recognizable face since Rachael’s arrest and throughout her trial, was waiting for us in the kitchen. She was sitting on the only chair that was still upright.
“Don’t come in,” she said. “I just wanted you to get a good look.”
We stood in the doorway and took in the mess. The room reeked of wine, and the floor was wet, slick, and covered with broken glass. The cabinet doors on one side of the room were splintered, and the lower half of the stainless-steel refrigerator door looked as if it had been rammed by a Toyota.
“There’s some cheesecake over there,” she said, pointing to a creamy yellow blob jammed against one of the downed chairs. “Take a slice back to the DA and tell him to shove it up his ass.”
“Ms. O’Keefe,” Kylie said, “we’re here to help find your sister.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so effing angry. We asked the DA for police protection for Rachael, but a dozen death threats and the fact that the jury found her innocent wasn’t enough to convince him.”
“And yet when your sister was kidnapped, you called the DA’s office instead of dialing 911,” Kylie said.
O’Keefe stood up. Her jeans and her T-shirt were wet and covered with some of the same slop that streaked the floor. The left side of her face was bruised, there were cuts on her neck and chin, and her wrists and ankles were caked with dried blood.
“Ms. O’Keefe,” Kylie said, “we can drive you to the hospital.”
“Call me Liz. No, I’m fine. Let’s get out of this mess.”
She tiptoed through the broken glass, and we followed her into a small, cluttered living room that looked as though it had been sealed in a time capsule the day it was furnished back in 1960.
Kylie and I sat on a cushy sofa, and Liz, whose clothes were too wet for the fabric, sat on a cane-backed wooden chair.
“I didn’t call the DA first,” she said. “I called Dennis Woloch, Rachael’s lawyer. He can’t legally tell me not to call 911, but he said dialing it would get me the local cops, who would run right over as soon as they finished responding to a loud music complaint or a couple of teenagers smoking weed in the park. I know that’s bullshit, but he also said if the news went out on the local police band, the press would turn the whole thing into another media circus.”
“That part is not bullshit,” Kylie said.
“Mr. Woloch said the DA released Rachael without any protection, and he might be embarrassed enough to call in this elite squad from NYPD, but I guess he sent you instead.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Kylie said, “but we are the elite squad.”
“Oh…I was kind of expecting something more like the navy SEALs.”
“Tell us what happened,” I said.
“One second Rachael and I were in the kitchen talking, and the next second two masked guys with guns came through the breezeway door.”
“Do you think they followed you from New York?” I asked.
“I was thinking somebody might, so I kept checking my rearview, but I never saw anyone. Even when I turned onto this dead-end street. Nobody.”
“What happened once they broke in?”
“They made us get on the floor. One tied Rachael up. The other one holstered his gun so he could tie me up, and I kneed him in the balls. Do you know Krav Maga? It’s an Israeli self-defense technique.”
“We know it well,” Kylie said.
“I’ve been studying it ever since I got mugged five years ago. If it had been just the one guy, I could’ve taken him, but they double-teamed me.”
“And then what?”
“They carried me to the bathroom, tied me up, and disabled all the phones. A few minutes later, I heard them carry Rachael out and drive away.”
“If their car was parked nearby, wouldn’t you have seen it when you drove in?”
“No. I was worried about someone following me. I didn’t check out the parked cars.”
“Can you describe the two men?” I asked.
“They were dressed in black. One was maybe six two. The other was shorter. Both strong. Their voices sounded like they were most likely white guys, kind of young—they knew what they were doing, like they were military.”
“Who knew you were bringing Rachael to this specific address?” I asked.
“Just me and Rachael’s lawyer, Mr. Woloch.”
“Did you tell anyone else?”
“No. Mr. Woloch had to tell the chief of corrections, but that’s because Judge Levine is going to sentence Rachael on the child endangerment charge in forty-five days, and they have to know where she is.”
“Detectives…” It was Dryden. “Can I see you outside, please?”
We followed him to the back of the house. The back door had been jimmied open. The wooden frame was cracked, and a small pane of glass had shattered onto the breezeway floor.
“You have prints?” I asked.
“They wore gloves. They left footprints when they tracked through the mess in the kitchen, and I can figure out which brand of sneakers they wore and what size, but I doubt if it will help. I wish I could do more, but these guys are pros, and I have to clear out of here.”
He left, and Kylie and I stood there at the back door. Clueless.
“Do me a favor,” she said. “Walk through the breezeway, go into the kitchen, and close the door.”
I did. Five seconds later, I heard glass breaking. I opened the breezeway door.
Kylie had her gun in her hand. “I broke another one of these windowpanes in the back door. Did you hear it?”
“Of course I heard it.”
“So if Rachael and Liz were in the kitchen when these guys broke in, they’d have heard the glass smash,” she said.
“But they didn’t,” I said.
“Because they broke in before Rachael and Liz got home,” she said.
“According to Liz, nobody knew where Rachael was going to
hide out,” I said.
“Somebody knew,” Kylie said. “And they were already inside the house, waiting for her.”
Chapter 50
“Like father, like son,” Jojo said, thumbing through his brother Enzo’s leather-bound collection book. “He was only in high school and he already had a nice business going, shaking the other kids down. He even used the family numbering code.”
Papa Joe Salvi smiled and tilted back in the very same desk chair that had been passed down by his father and his grandfather before that. He ran his thumb over the brass studs that held the green leather armrests to the ornate mahogany arms. “I taught him that code when he was only twelve.”
“He never told you?” Jojo said.
“Told me what?”
“About the code. You taught it to me when I was twelve, but I had trouble with it, and I didn’t want to tell you, so I showed it to Enzo. He figured it out in two minutes, and then he explained it back to me. He was a kid, only nine, but that was Enzo—smart as a whip.”
“Oh, he was smart,” Joe said, taking the book from his son’s hands and stroking the soft red leather. Enzo, his youngest—named for his blessed father—Enzo was the one he’d always planned to pass the torch to. Enzo had a head for the business. He was a fox. His big brother was a bull.
“This Mrs. Frye who returned the book,” Jojo said. “Is she white?”
“She’s from St. Agnes,” Salvi said. “What else would she be?”
“Pop, I’m just saying—I always thought the blacks from Ozone Park killed Enzo. They had a grudge from when he beat the shit out of one of their gangbangers.”
Salvi shook his head. “You think this Mrs. Frye got Enzo’s book from some black kid in Ozone Park? No. She found it in her house, and I’ll bet her kid hid it there on the very night that Enzo died.”
“So then this Frye kid—he killed Enzo?”
“Either him or he knows who did.”
“So let me go have a little talk with him,” Jojo said.
“In order for that to happen, I’d have to know who Mrs. Frye’s son is and where to find him.”
“No problem. Why don’t me and Tommy Boy go over there and have a little chat with Mrs. Frye?”
Salvi rubbed his chin and took a deep breath. “Jojo, do you really think that sending over two muscle-bound stunads to scare the shit out of some old lady is the way to go?”
“I don’t know, Papa. I didn’t think about the whole thing. I was just trying to help.”
“There will be plenty of time for you and Tommy Boy to help,” Salvi said, patting Jojo on the knee, much the way he’d pat a dog on the head. “But for now, don’t think. I know exactly how to handle it.”
Chapter 51
“I’m driving,” Kylie said when we got back to the car.
“As long as you asked so sweetly, sure,” I said, tossing her the keys. “Just try to remember that it’s a Ford, not the Batmobile.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t want to go on another suicide run like the one you did up Park Avenue on Monday.”
“I’ll drive like a little old lady,” she said. “Just like you do.”
She made a U-turn, drove to the top of Harold Avenue, and turned left onto Broad.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “The two guys who took Rachael were waiting at the house before she got home. This is a quiet little town. Liz said she kept checking her rearview, and at three in the morning there’s no way anyone could have followed her without being seen.”
“So how did they know where Rachael was going?”
“It would be easy if they’re real cops.”
“You and I are real cops,” Kylie said. “We didn’t know.”
“But we could have found out easily enough. Just call a friend at corrections or the DA’s office. That has to be where the leak came from.”
“So between the two agencies, how many people do you think knew enough to disclose the undisclosed location?”
“A lot more than I feel like tracking down,” I said, “but right now, it’s the only lead we’ve got.”
My cell rang. “It’s Cates,” I said, and picked it up.
“Where are you?” she said.
I told her.
“I need you and MacDonald ASAP,” she said.
“We can be back in the office in—”
“I’m not in the office,” she said.
She told me where to meet her.
“What’s going on there?” I said.
“Just get here,” she said, and hung up.
“What was that about?” Kylie said. “You didn’t even fill her in on what we just figured out.”
“She didn’t ask. I think she’s got something more important to deal with.”
“Like what?”
“Like she didn’t say. She just wants us to meet her in Queens.”
“What’s in Queens?” Kylie said.
“Silvercup Studios.”
“Are you dicking around, Zach? Because if you are, it’s not—”
I shook my head. “That’s what she said. Meet her at Silvercup Studios.”
“Is it Spence? Is he okay?”
“She didn’t say anything about Spence. She didn’t say anything about anything.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Kylie said, whacking the palm of her hand on the steering wheel. “Of course it’s about Spence. Why else would she want us at Silvercup?”
She flipped on the flashers and stepped on the gas, and the Batmobile lurched forward.
I buckled up my seat belt. The little old lady behind the wheel had been replaced by a crazy woman.
Chapter 52
We blasted across the lower level of the GW Bridge into Manhattan and down the Harlem River Drive. “Cates is already pissed at me for my little run-in with Damon Parker,” Kylie said as she merged onto the FDR and kicked the Ford up to seventy.
“You flat-out accused the victim’s brother of exploiting her death for his own personal gain,” I said. “I’m not sure the department would classify that as a ‘little run-in.’”
“So if Cates chewed me out for that, what do you think she’ll do now that she knows my husband has a drug problem and wound up in the ER twice in the past three days?”
“Who knows what Cates knows? She didn’t say a word about Spence.”
“She didn’t have to. She told us to drop what we’re doing and meet her where he works.”
She got off the FDR at 53rd Street, turned right onto First Avenue, and shot up the ramp onto the bridge to Queens. We skidded into the parking lot at Silvercup fourteen minutes after Cates called.
A golf cart was waiting for us at the front gate. The man behind the wheel was Bob Reitzfeld, a former NYPD lieutenant who left the department after thirty years, then dodged what he called the “death by retirement” bullet by signing on as a night watchman at Silvercup. Two years later, he was running the entire security team.
“How’s Spence?” Kylie asked as we climbed into the backseat.
“Short term, he’ll be fine,” Reitzfeld said as he navigated a narrow hallway between studios. “They’re sewing him back together in the ER. But long term, your boy’s got a problem, and Shelley can’t cover for him much longer.”
“How long has Shelley known Spence was using?” she asked.
“At least a month. That’s when he first told me. But by now everyone in the cast and crew is aware of it. If he doesn’t get clean soon, his career is going to be in the crapper.”
“His career? How about mine?” Kylie said. “Right now I’m the lead detective on a high-profile murder case. Tomorrow morning Cates may have me hauling in sixth graders for spray-painting their names on schoolyard walls.”
Reitzfeld eased the golf cart to a stop, turned around, and looked at Kylie. “Let me get this straight—you think Cates is here because Spence got high and bowled over a couple of lights?”
“Why else would my boss show up at the
studio an hour after my husband fucked up?”
“Kylie, I know I look like the guy in the blue blazer who drives the golf cart, but I was a precinct boss myself for a couple of tours, and I can promise you that Captain Cates didn’t trek out here to Queens to make you pay for Spence’s sins. Because if she did, she wouldn’t have brought the mayor with her.”
That caught both of us by surprise.
“The mayor is here?” Kylie said.
“Along with Irwin Diamond and Shelley. They’re all waiting on you in Studio Five, and it’s none of my business, but the last thing they need is a stressed-out cop, so I suggest you get your head together and put your game face on before you go in there.”
He turned back around, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Kylie said to Reitzfeld as he dropped us off in front of the studio. “I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Tell the guy you’re walking into the room with.”
He pulled out and left us standing there.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face that you’re fine.”
“Of course I’m not fine,” she said. “As soon as I heard we were coming here to meet Cates, all I could think about was that Spence was about to wreck my career.”
“Right now, there’s only one person about to wreck your career, and it’s not Spence,” I said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to keep you from self-destructing.”
“There is,” she said. She dug her hand into her pocket and tossed me the car keys. “For starters, don’t let me drive when I’m this crazy.”
“Good call,” I said, taking the keys. “Anything else?”
“Yeah…I know I haven’t been the best partner these past two weeks. Do me a favor—set the clock back and give me another chance to make things right between us.”
“You got it,” I said.
What I didn’t say was that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to set it back two weeks or eleven years.
Chapter 53
Studio 5 is one of the smaller studios under the Silvercup roof. Even so, it’s at least fifty feet long and forty wide. Cates, the mayor, his consigliere Irwin Diamond, and Spence’s boss, Shelley Trager, were waiting for us inside. They were at the far end of the room, standing in the living room set of a TV show I didn’t recognize. Cates walked across the studio to meet us.
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