Crowe turned and lay on his side, suddenly weary of talking. Tracey must have felt it. In a few moments he heard her breath fall into the rhythm of a sleeper. And in a few more minutes, he went where she had gone.
THURSDAY
Chapter 42
New York
Crowe awoke at five o’clock. Despite the makeshift bed on the floor he’d slept well. He sat up. Tracey lay curled on the nearby bed, knees drawn up, face turned toward him. He watched for a moment as she slept, admiring her beauty, taking comfort in the serenity of the dawn. They’d made a late night of it and an extra hour in bed would do him no harm. He lay back down, closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.
He got up at six, folding his blankets into a tidy pile. He woke Tracey and went for a shower. As he toweled off, he glanced at himself in the mirror. Forty years old and he still had the body of a thirty-year-old. He weighed the same as when he’d graduated from high school. Although he couldn’t do as many push-ups or sit-ups, he did yoga and swam and could run a 100-yard dash if he had to catch a streetcar.
When he came back into the room, Tracey was still in bed but awake. Crowe clapped his hands. “Let’s go. Don’t you have criminals to catch and justice to serve?”
“Right. If we can’t catch the many who are guilty, how can we save the few who are innocent?” She sat up with her back to him and pulled on her shirt.
“You’re cynical. I like that in a woman.”
“Guilty as charged.” She punched him in the shoulder as she passed.
While she took a shower, Crowe ordered room service: coffee and toast for her, juice and a muffin for him. They ate together and he walked her to Cooper Square, where she said she’d continue alone to her condo at First Avenue and 9th Street.
“Busy day ahead?” he asked.
“The Stockwell case? The Commissioner’s taking an interest.”
“Say no more. Maybe we can catch up end of day, compare notes?”
“I’d like to, but no promises.”
“Same for me. I’m on the clock and I’ve got to start earning my keep.” He gave her a hug and she waved goodbye as she headed off.
Crowe walked back to Sheridan Square, stretching his legs as he took in a few sights. A couple of guys, mid-thirties in business suits, went by holding hands. An older man dressed in a powder blue leisure suit walked a Pomeranian with a matching blue collar. On a billboard above the square the Marlboro Man looked down on the street from astride his horse, a pack of cigarettes in his tanned hand.
Crowe sat on the terrace of a café and ordered an espresso. After reviewing and responding to some email, he browsed a copy of The Village Voice someone had left on an adjacent table. One of the Sex columns featured an article: ‘Threesomes, a Navigational Guide.’
He read the article, not because it interested him, but resonated with what he’d seen yesterday near the crime scene: The Bermuda Love Triangle playing on Broadway, the cartoon graffiti of a three-way on a construction siding, the triangle in the hand of the victim outline.
It reaffirmed Crowe’s suspicion of a love triangle in this case. But with whom? Assuming Jeb Stockwell and his wife were two sides of the triangle, who was the third? The Filipino maid? When he’d asked May Lee if Stockwell had a girlfriend, she’d shut down immediately. Discretion or guilt?
If not May Lee, who else? The mystery woman from the Southwest? Someone in San Francisco? Crowe took a mental trip across the continent and back – northeast, southwest, west coast – that left him with the visual of a big triangle and much emptiness in between, which pretty much described his situation, not knowing which way to turn.
When in doubt, walk it out, Guruji used to say.
Crowe walked back to Washington Square Park. In the southwest corner of the park, near Macdougal and West 4th Street, a half-circle of chess tables were permanently installed beneath some trees. It was a hangout for chess aficionados and hustlers, some looking to play the game of kings, others looking to hustle a few bucks. A microcosm of life in general.
Even at this early hour, several people had gathered to do battle. Crowe strolled among the tables, looking over players’ shoulders, and paused to watch a teenage boy playing simultaneous games with three other people. Crowe had played chess in high school and studied the game well enough to understand the classic strategies, so he appreciated what the kid was up against.
The first thing that caught his eye was the three-on-one action. Another triple play. As he watched the teenager rotate through opponents, Crowe saw more triplicity at work. The kid worked his knights hard, actively moving them through the front lines of the opposing pawns, attacking and defending as required. Knights were the commandos of the chess battlefield because they didn’t need a line-of-sight, making irregular jumps over other pieces – two steps in one direction, a third step at right angles. The knight’s move was itself triangular.
What was a knight? A warrior or samurai, defender of a king or emperor. Less commonly, a mercenary or soldier of fortune whose allegiance could be bought. A knight occupied the kshatriya class of India – a soldier, policeman or security officer – whose strength and skill in weaponry served the dictates of his superiors.
Crowe turned this idea in his mind, trying to see how it fit the rest of the picture. He could only speculate on three possibilities: Janis Stockwell’s killer had not acted alone, her murder was part of something still larger, and there was a mastermind behind all this.
Within a few minutes, the teenager closed each of his three games with a checkmate that left his opponents shaking their heads in dismay and admiration. Crowe mused that, if he was up against a strategist of this caliber, his assignment was ill-fated.
But as William Blake had put it so well, If the Sun and Moon should doubt, they would immediately go out.
Doubt never accomplished anything, Crowe reflected, except to plant seeds of indecision and inaction. Better to have the faith of a fool and plunge on, never mind the obstacles, so long as he heeded his own compass of intuition and induction.
Chapter 43
Santa Fe
Carrie Cassidy stared at her computer, trying to decide what her two characters in this scene, an aging cowboy Casanova and the magazine journalist who’d fallen under his spell, could possibly say to each other after he’d given her the orgasm of her life in the back of his 4x4 parked on a deserted road in the Cimarron foothills…
Next to her computer was last night’s empty wineglass, a dirty ashtray and a pack of cigarillos. She took a cigarillo from the pack but didn’t light it. It was almost as satisfying to chew on the plastic tip, inhaling the sweet musk of the cigarillo, as to fire it up and turn that aromatic humidity into dry smoke.
But today, suck as hard as she could at the well of her inspiration, she wasn’t getting any good ideas. She wondered what her heroine saw in this randy old cowpoke. Was she so shallow as to compromise the objectivity of her story for a joyride in the foothills? Worse still, did Carrie recognize herself in this characterization?
That was the problem with writing. Although Carrie enjoyed its solitary nature, the plotting and word play as much as using research for an excuse to go anywhere and talk to anyone, the downside was it made her think too much about what made her tick. It was almost as invasive as therapy.
Write about what you know, the experts advised. She liked to think she knew men but who was she kidding? Men constituted the great dilemma of her life. What was that line from Mae West? A hard man is good to find. She had to laugh. She’d found a lot of those but they didn’t stand up to scrutiny for long. Maybe she was too much of an idealist, wanting to have her beefcake and eat it too.
She loved the male body and the more sculpted it was, the more she was a sucker, literally, for its charms. But most of the jocks she knew were one-trick ponies. Problem was, she needed someone to engage her at all levels. Literature, politics, science, art – she was interested in it all. Her dream date was a guy who knew which wine to order wit
h dinner, who could debate any topic du jour, and who could deliver dessert at the end of the night. Was that too much to ask?
Held up to the light of reality, apparently it was. Demand far exceeds supply, God had shrugged. Take a number.
What was it about brains and brawn? Did some perverse law of nature dictate the two couldn’t coexist within the same man? She felt like she’d spent a lifetime in pursuit of Homo Erectus Cogitus. The critter was more elusive than Bigfoot. In the good old days Walt used to perform remarkably well for an endomorph and what he lacked in abs and pecs, he made up for in imagination. As for brains he was like a ripe Brie, oozing with intellect. Trouble was, his work had taken him far away from her, like an astronaut soldier sent to wage war with distant aliens, and when he occasionally came home on furlough, he wasn’t the same Walt any more. She missed him already...
She lowered her head into her hands. She could feel a tension headache coming on, which meant she had to either have a drink or masturbate, if not both. She looked at the clock. She had her principles. It was too early in the day to start drinking.
~~~
San Antonio, New Mexico
FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Liam Cobb was in his Ford Crown Victoria heading west on Route 380 with one of his field agents, Paul Kramer. They’d just crossed the Rio Grande and were approaching San Antonio. They’d been debating where to stop for lunch on the Bureau’s tab. There was almost nothing in San Antonio so it looked like it would have to be in Socorro, another 10 miles up I-25, where there was a Taco Bell. However, mindful of the need to acquaint Kramer, a recent transfer from Wisconsin, with real Mexican food, Cobb debated a multitude of better options, such as Don Juan’s Cocina, Burrito Tyme or El Sombrero Café.
It was a gorgeous day and the only thing in the sky was a cloud of cranes, maybe two hundred strong, heading for Bosque del Apache, a huge wildlife preserve a few miles to the south. When Cobb’s phone rang he glanced at the display and recognized the exchange for the National Laboratory. It was Mack Horton.
“What’s up?” Cobb said.
“Any luck with those guys you picked up the other day?”
“We questioned them for twenty-four hours but it seems we’re wasting our time. They both have rock-solid alibis, their residences were clean and, on closer scrutiny, they don’t seem to have much sympathy for, never mind connection to, the organization we suspected of being behind the bombing. We’re going to cut ‘em loose today.”
“So that’s it for suspects?”
“Unfortunately.”
“What about Cassidy’s wife?”
“I’m just on my way back now from Alamogordo, where one of my guys and I spent an evening making inquiries. I talked to the woman whose house she rented two winters ago. It’s just a few blocks away from a bar that’s popular with military personnel.”
“So, what’s that make her – a patriot?”
“The landlady was pretty observant, her own house being just across the street, and she saw who came and went. Mrs. Cassidy had an active social life, sometimes going out with a different guy every week or two. But as she admitted, her marriage was on the rocks, so who am I to cast a stone?”
“If adultery was a crime, we’d have to lock up half the country.”
“I also got one of my staff to dig into her past. Born and raised in Austin, very active in track and field, scored 750 on her SATs. Father was in the service, a sergeant in the Marines, but was killed in 1983 during the Beirut suicide bombing of his barracks. She went to Berkeley on an Army scholarship, got a bachelor’s in literature. Despite four years in California, no hint of radical politics. If anything, she’s right wing. A registered Republican, does pro bono PR work for the NRA. Worked for a year as a script reader in LA, then moved to New Mexico in the mid-nineties. Met Dr. Cassidy in ninety-seven and married him the following year.”
“But she was out of town when he died.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t remind me.”
“So you’ve eliminated her as a suspect?”
“Not entirely. She’s still got financial motive. Aside from his government life insurance, Dr. Cassidy’s estate is worth almost five million. He made some good investments during the dot-com era and cashed in before it imploded.”
“Wish he’d told me.”
“You and me both, pardner.”
“Where’s that leave us for suspects?”
“Flappin’ in the wind.”
“Never mind she was in New York at the time, what about an accomplice? If she was dating military in Alamogordo, she could’ve met someone handy with explosives.”
“I’m ahead of you,” Cobb said. “In Alamogordo last night, we visited every bar in the vicinity of Holloman Air Force base with her photo in hand. Got a few names and visited human resources on the base this morning to look at service records for anyone she associated with. But this was two winters ago and personnel change. A lot of servicemen have transferred elsewhere in the country or shipped out to the Middle East. Unless something comes out of the woodwork, we could be at a dead end.”
~~~
Los Alamos
Horton took the elevator downstairs to visit Agent Green in the monitoring room. Green had his feet up on his desk, reading an internal report with one eye on the monitor carrying the live feed from the Cassidy residence. Horton peered over his shoulder.
From the living room where the mini-camera had been planted, they could see through the patio door to a courtyard where Carrie Cassidy sat at a small table. There was a glass of white wine within reach as she smoked a cigarillo and leafed through a magazine.
“What’s up?” Horton said.
“Writer’s block. She’s been in and out of her office all morning, can’t seem to sit still. Offscreen in her bedroom for half an hour but since noon she’s switched gears.”
“What’s she reading?”
“Car & Driver.”
“Any visitors?”
“None.”
“Made any phone calls?”
Green referred to his log sheet. “Her mother in New York. Her brother-in-law in Denver. Her agent in New York. Locally, a few friends, a couple of funeral homes. This morning, a local BMW dealership.”
“Isn’t the funeral today?”
“Yep.”
“Received any calls?”
“Condolence from friends but not many. It’s kind of pathetic. You don’t know whether to feel sorry for her or Dr. Cassidy.”
“I talked to his team. He’d pretty much mastered the art of arrogance, at least at work. I don’t know what he was like in private life.”
Green gestured to the screen. “How long you want me to keep logging time on this?”
Horton reflected that, if the FBI were taking a hard look at her too, his illegal and unsanctioned surveillance was undoubtedly redundant. If by some freak circumstance she discovered their covert bug, her first call would be to a lawyer and there’d be total hell to pay. He was too close to pension to justify that kind of risk.
“Give it the rest of the day. If nothing develops, take the first opportunity to yank our gear out of there.”
Chapter 44
New York
Axel Crowe returned to his hotel and spent the rest of the morning on the phone with clients. At noon, he took the Lexington Avenue subway uptown. He was dressed now in a suit with shirt and tie, just another man on his way to a business meeting, except his business was unlike any other. From the 68th Street stop, he walked over to First Avenue to look for the Upper East Side funeral home.
He saw a marquee, Oakes & Shannon Funeral Home, over the entrance of a granite-faced building. A taxi stopped in front and a middle-aged couple disembarked. Crowe followed them into the chapel. Two dozen mourners were already present, circulating past the family of the deceased to view a casket flanked by floral displays.
Kevin Blaikie noticed Crowe and beckoned him over. “Axel, I assume you met my brother-in-law, Jeb Stockwell?”
Stockwell,
wearing a double-breasted black Armani suit, gave Crowe a brief nod as if he’d met him perhaps a year ago rather than just yesterday.
Blaikie and Stockwell shifted their attention to the chapel entrance. Crowe saw an elderly couple in the doorway – a robust man with a florid complexion holding the arm of a thin frail woman, both in their seventies.
“Excuse me, Axel, my folks have just arrived.”
From previous discussions with Blaikie, Crowe knew a little about his family. His father Abner Blaikie was a self-made multi-millionaire who’d pioneered Trump’s formula, buying distressed midtown hotels and office buildings for renovation during the last twenty years of New York’s real estate renaissance. Thanks to tax breaks for the ultra-rich, he was now worth close to half a billion.
Blaikie’s mother Amy, formerly a top-ranked golfer, had developed hyperthyroidism in her fifties and lost a lot of weight. Although she still attended the odd social function and twice-weekly bridge games with friends, she was now a virtual recluse.
Blaikie and Stockwell went to greet the elderly couple, leaving Crowe alone near the funeral dais. He went to the casket and viewed the deceased. Janis Stockwell was a blonde with plain but handsome features – a high brow and strong jaw line. She wore a blue long-sleeved dress and her hands were folded on her stomach. Her face was too obscured by cosmetics to read much in her features, so Crowe’s attention quickly shifted to her hands.
From the back of the hand, there was little to observe, but Crowe saw her index fingers were long and slim – often the mark of altruists who pursued their calling through teaching, diplomacy, spiritual pursuits or charitable work. Her pinkie finger appeared to be quite short, implying a diminished libido.
The ring finger on her right hand bore a wedding band with five one-carat blue sapphires, and an engagement ring with a five-carat blue sapphire, both in white gold. Blue sapphire was associated with Saturn which ruled the fifth house of children for a Libra ascendant. Such a gemstone suggested denial of children, perhaps fortuitously, since otherwise they would have been without a mother.