Over the past twenty-two years, the Bassetts had been the victims of three previous robberies. Each one had been flawlessly planned by Max and executed by professionals. None of the cases had been solved, and the claims, each one filed with a different insurance company, were paid in full—a total of nineteen million dollars. Max then recut the stolen gems and sold them as loose stones.
“Leo,” Max said patiently, “these two cops will not give up. They will be back again, and again, and again. You want to know why?”
Leo shrugged.
Max exploded. “Because they’ve got a dead fucking movie star on their plate. I told you this was a bad idea from the get-go. Banta and Burkhardt are in prison for the next thirty years, and what did I say to you? I said let’s not press our luck. Let’s not try this with somebody new. But no: you swore that Jeremy could pull it off, and he’d bring in two top-notch replacements. Top-notch? One is dead, the other is on the run, and the cops have a surveillance picture of your boy toy. You better find Jeremy and our necklace before they do, or we’re in deep shit. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”
“Talk you into it? Don’t lay this on me. What choice did we have? We’re hemorrhaging money. Do you know how much you’ve spent on your over-the-top African safaris and your insane deep-sea expeditions?” Leo demanded. “And God knows how many millions you’ve poured into the lake house.”
“While you, on the other hand, are as frugal as a church mouse on a pension.”
“I’ve worked hard all my life, Max. I’ve earned my little taste of la dolce vita.”
Max snorted. “Little taste? You are the most narcissistic, hedonistic person on the planet. You flew thirty people to Paris in September, put them up in a five-star hotel for four days, paid for their food, their wine, their—”
“Shut up!” Leo screamed. “It was my sixtieth birthday, and yes, I spent a lot of money, and no, I have no regrets. Non, je ne regrette rien, mon frère. I’m spending my money now, while I’m alive, and if I don’t have enough, I will go out and get more.”
“You want more money, Leo? All you have to do is sign the goddamn contract with Precio Mundo, and you’ll have all the money you ever need to feed your face until the day you die.”
“Never! Leo Bassett is a jeweler to the stars, not a flunky for a bunch of cut-rate, low-rent, bargain-basement Mexican whores.”
“Flunky? You’d be in a partnership with one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. And they’re not cut-rate. They’re mass-market. Which means half a million women could be wearing our jewelry instead of one dead actress.”
Leo took a step back. “What are you implying, Max?”
“I’m not implying anything. I am flat-out saying that it’s your fault she’s dead. You were supposed to be in the backseat with her. You were supposed to keep her calm and get her to hand over the necklace without an argument. It may have been the single most important thing you’ve ever had to do in your life, Leo, and you blew it off because you didn’t want to walk down the red carpet smelling like a fish stick.”
“I’m sorry about Elena, but stealing the necklace was the right call.”
“Why don’t you put that in a little handwritten note to Elena’s parents? ‘Dear Mom and Dad. Sorry about your daughter, but I needed the money. Signed, Leo Bassett, jeweler to the stars.’”
Maxwell Bassett knew where his brother’s buttons were, and he knew this was the last one he had to push.
Leo threw him the finger, turned, and stormed out of the room.
Poor Leo, Max thought. Did you really think I would let you and Jeremy be in charge of stealing an eight-million-dollar necklace?
He smiled. This was going better than he’d planned.
“The same goes for me, Leo,” he whispered softly. “Non, je ne regrette rien, mon frère.”
CHAPTER 31
“One dead perp is a good start,” Captain Cates said after we brought her up to speed on the Travers murder, “but it’s been almost forty-eight hours. Elena was an international star. Half the world is waiting for answers.”
“Then you might want to tell half the world that we’d have more answers if we didn’t get sidetracked every time another body-probe machine went missing.”
“I feel your pain, Jordan,” Cates said, “but this is NYPD Red, and nothing is redder than whatever is troubling Mayor Sykes and/or her husband. I gave you a backup team, but you two are still on the front line till these hospital robberies are solved.”
“Even if it takes time away from our primary case?” I said.
“You have two primary cases, Detective. What you don’t have is a personal life. Do I have to say ‘That’s an order’? Because if I do, consider it said. Now, is there anything else I need to know?”
“We did a quiet background check on the Bassett brothers,” Kylie said. “This is the fourth time they’ve been robbed in twenty-two years.”
“The bodega in my neighborhood has been robbed four times since July,” Cates said. “Give me a perspective.”
“The JSA stats say there were about fifteen hundred jewelry robberies last year—about four a day,” Kylie said. “So for the Bassetts to get hit four times in twenty-two years isn’t enough to put up a red flag. But this robbery smacks of being an inside job, and since Leo and Max are as inside as you can get, we wanted to know more about them.”
“I’ve met them,” Cates said. “Leo is a charming old queen. Dumb with a capital Duh. He was caught in a compromising position in a men’s room at a movie theater a few years ago, but that’s the extent of his criminal history. If you ask me, Max is the real felon.”
“His name didn’t pop up in the database,” I said.
“That’s because our penal code turns a blind eye to what he does. Max Bassett spends millions of dollars to hunt in private compounds where exotic animals are bred so they can be legally slaughtered. African elephants, lions, rhinos, polar bears—the man has a trophy room filled with the heads and carcasses of some of the world’s most endangered species.”
“That’s disgusting,” Kylie said.
“And expensive,” Cates said. “Max may be wealthy, but he doesn’t have unlimited resources. If he’s addicted to killing rare animals, stealing an eight-million-dollar necklace would pay for more than a few safaris.”
“It sounds like a motive, boss, but Zach and I interviewed someone today who told us the Bassett brothers are about to get very, very rich very, very soon.”
“Who told you that?”
“Lavinia Begbie.”
“The gossip columnist?”
Kylie’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID. “I think this is the call we’ve been waiting for. Let me take it at my desk. Zach, tell the captain what Lavinia told us.”
She stepped out of the room.
“We talked to Lavinia Begbie because she was at the Bassett brothers’ cocktail party the night of the murder,” I said. “Leo was supposed to be in the limo with Elena, but he bailed out at the last minute, which seemed a little convenient to us. But Begbie said that Leo tripped over her dog, took a header into the buffet table, wound up covered with goop, and was in no shape to make a public appearance.”
“So his alibi for not being in the limo holds up,” Cates said, “but I’m much more interested in the part about the Bassetts coming into big money.”
“Begbie said they’re about to make a zillion-dollar deal with Precio Mundo to mass-market their brand.”
“I didn’t go to business school,” Cates said, “but that sounds to me like winning the ultimate big-box-store lottery.”
“Exactly. So why would they risk it all to steal a necklace?”
Kylie came bursting through the door. “Good news, Captain. NCIC has a lead on Annie Ryder. Zach and I have to run.”
“Go,” Cates said. “Keep me posted.”
For the second time that day, I chased Kylie down the stairs and out the door, but this time we weren’t heading off to another hospita
l. I was convinced that Annie Ryder was the linchpin to cracking the Travers case, and I was psyched.
“Where is Annie holed up?” I asked Kylie as I got into the car.
She put it in gear and pulled out. “I have no idea.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That wasn’t NCIC who called me. It was Shelley Trager. His cleaning lady showed up at the corporate apartment and found Spence smoking crack with two other men.”
“That phone call was about Spence? But you told Cates we just got a major break in our biggest case. Are you out of your mind?”
“Oh, I’m definitely out of my mind, Zach,” she said, nearly running down a pedestrian in case I had any doubts.
“How in God’s name could you lie to our boss like that?”
“Zach, she just put a freeze on personal time. How in God’s name could I tell her the truth?”
“And did you think about telling me the truth before you dragged me into this train wreck?”
“I didn’t exactly have time to come up with an elaborate game plan, Zach,” she said, zipping through another red light. “Besides, you would have tried to talk me out of it, and I don’t have time for that either. I need to do this, and I need you with me.”
“For what?”
“You’re the only one I can trust to help me talk some sense into my drug-addled husband.”
“Spence’s counselor specifically told you—you have to let the man hit rock bottom. You can’t save him, Kylie.”
Kylie almost never cries, but I could see that she was fighting to hold back the tears behind that strong MacDonald wall of resolve. She almost never curses either, but she wheeled around and hurled an f-bomb at me.
“Fuck Spence’s counselor! I’m his wife. I’m also a detective first grade with the most elite police unit in this city, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around and watch my husband pull a ten-year stretch for crack possession.”
CHAPTER 32
Shelley’s apartment was only a five-minute drive from the precinct. With Kylie behind the wheel, I figured I had half that time to bring her down from DEFCON 1 to a more manageable state of hothead with a short fuse.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked.
“You know me, Zach. I’m methodical to a fault. That’s why they call me the queen of departmental procedure.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “You’re a cop. You can’t just storm into the apartment—”
“I’m not storming. Shelley left me a key. What he should have done was change the lock after he put the place off limits, but he trusted Spence to play by the rules. Big mistake to trust a junkie. Spence had a key, the doormen all knew him, so he apparently just waltzed right in with Marco and Seth.”
“You know his drug buddies?”
“I’ve seen them around Silvercup. Marco works for the catering company that services Spence’s productions. He’s a decent guy—married, goes to meetings when he’s clean—but he relapsed about a year ago and never bounced back. Seth is a total asshole. He’s a kid, maybe twenty-four, went to NYU film school, works on and off as a production assistant, acts like he knows it all, and when he’s hopped up, he knows even more. Neither of those two guys has enough money to feed his habit, which is why they glommed on to Spence.”
“Let me repeat the question,” I said as she pulled up to the building on East End Avenue. “Do you have a plan?”
“No. Do you?”
I didn’t answer. My only plan was to keep her from going ballistic.
The concierge at the front desk barely looked at us. He handed Kylie a set of keys, then busied himself with paperwork. Clearly he’d spoken to Shelley.
I’ve been to crack houses, but never to one on the tenth floor of a luxury building with a magnificent view of the East River. The smell hit us as soon as Kylie opened the door, and while the place hadn’t been destroyed like the studio sets, it looked like the aftermath of a frat party. No wonder the cleaning lady bolted. Spence had turned Shelley’s multimillion-dollar corporate apartment into a three-bedroom, three-bathroom drug den.
There were two men in the living room, one sprawled on the sofa, one on the floor, neither of them Spence. Kylie and I searched the place. He was gone.
We went back to the living room. The man on the floor had managed to pull himself to a sitting position, his back against a coffee table littered with drug paraphernalia, his legs stretched out on the rug.
“You got a warrant, Detective Harrington?” he said. “Or are you just not familiar with the Fourth Amendment?”
“It’s Detective MacDonald, Seth, and I’m here because the owner of this apartment reported a break-in.”
“And I’m here because your crackhead husband was having a boys’ night out, and he invited me over.”
“I’m going to make this easy on you, Seth,” Kylie said, standing over him. “Tell me where to find Spence, and I’ll let you walk.”
“Let me walk? I can walk anytime I want to. You busted in here without cause. But if you want to haul me in, fine. I’ll tell the DA that the cop who arrested me is married to my drug dealer.”
“I’m trying hard to be nice to you,” she said, her voice calm and composed. “Last chance, Seth. Where’s Spence?”
“You want to know where Spence is? Sure thing,” he said, looking up at her and spreading his legs even wider. “But first, suck my dick.”
And that was all it took for the woman without a plan to come up with a brilliant strategy. She kicked him right in the balls.
Seth curled up into himself, screaming in the kind of excruciating pain that only some men have ever experienced, but all men dread.
I grabbed her just in case she thought she hadn’t made her point, and for the next three minutes we watched Seth writhing on the floor, gasping for air, and fouling Shelley’s hand-knotted one-of-a-kind Persian rug with vomit.
Relief came eventually, and Seth finally settled into a teary whimper.
“Marco,” Kylie said to the man on the sofa, her voice barely above a whisper. “Did you see what just happened? Your friend here said, ‘I can walk anytime I want to.’ Does it look like he can walk?”
Marco shook his head, his eyes wide with fear. He sat up, knees pressed tight against each other, hands cupped over his nuts. “I swear on my daughter’s life, I don’t know where Spence went. Him and me, we’re friends. I don’t have a lot of money, but I always know where to get the good shit, so we make a good team.”
My phone rang. I picked up.
“Did you find Annie Ryder yet?” It was Q.
“NCIC is still working on it.”
“Then you were right,” Q said. “I do have a better database than they do. Annie’s back in New York. She’s got a place in Astoria.”
He gave me an address on Hoyt Avenue. I hung up and nodded at Kylie. “We’ve got a twenty on Annie.”
“We’re done here,” she said to Marco. “Take this worthless piece of shit with you.”
Marco dragged Seth to his feet and practically carried him out the door.
Kylie locked up and texted Shelley to send for a cleaning crew and a locksmith.
“Thanks,” she said once we were back in the car. “I was pretty crazy when we left Cates’s office. Having you there helped calm me down.”
I smiled. All things considered, she had been pretty calm. But I doubted if Seth would agree.
CHAPTER 33
“Ed Koch or Robert F. Kennedy?” Kylie asked before we pulled out into traffic.
I laughed out loud. Annie Ryder lived in Queens, and we were in Manhattan, on the opposite side of the East River. There were two ways to get across, neither of them any faster than the other. But having butted heads with me about her need to run the show, she was now turning the next critical decision over to me: which bridge to take.
“Haven’t you busted enough balls for one day?” I said. “Just get me there alive.”
We took the RFK.
Ryder
lived on the seventh floor of a newly constructed fifteen-story tower that had been designated as affordable housing for seniors. Kylie rang the bell in the lobby.
“Ms. Ryder,” she said. “NYPD. Can we ask you a few questions?”
“Only if you have identification,” the voice came back. “I can’t open the door unless you show me proof that you really are the police.”
Kylie gave me a grin. Annie was playing the little old lady afraid to open the door for muggers. The charade continued outside her apartment until we proved that we were legit, and she finally let us in.
Annie had been charged twice with fraud, and even though nothing stuck, her picture was still in our database. But the person who opened the door looked nothing like the steely-eyed, stern-jawed, fiftysomething grifter whose mug shot I’d studied. This Annie was twenty years older, and with her gray hair pulled back in a bun and a warm crinkly smile on her face, she looked like the woman you’d cast to play the farmhouse granny in a Hallmark commercial.
“How can I help you, officers?” she asked.
“We’re looking for your son, Teddy,” I said.
“Then you should get in touch with his parole officer. That fella always knows where Teddy is better than his own mother,” she said, capping it off with a roll of her eyes that looked like it had been lifted from a fifties sitcom.
“When did you last see him?” Kylie asked.
Annie tapped her chin and thought about it for a bit. “Oh, I remember,” she said. “He came here for dinner Monday night. I made a meat loaf. Then the two of us watched TV while we had our dessert.”
“What was on that night?” Kylie said, asking the standard cop follow-up question.
“Well, I love to watch the celebrities get all dolled up, so we turned on the show where they were doing live coverage of a Hollywood premiere. It was horrible. Here’s me and Teddy, just sitting there eating our Chunky Monkey ice cream, watching to see who’s the next one to walk down the red carpet, and all of a sudden, this limo crashes and out tumbles that poor actress who got shot.”