"Yeah. So?"
"You read books, DeLeon?"
"Yeah, I can read. I can tie my shoes. I can fieldstrip a Glock in one minute sixteen seconds. Oh, and put it back together, too, without any missing parts. What's your point?"
"You know how if you read a book and you like it and it's a good book, it stays with you? Parts of it do? Well, I read a book a few years ago. In it this guy has to kill a terrorist, but if the terrorist is murdered there'd be an international incident, so it has to look like a natural death."
"How'd they set it up?"
"It was really smart. They shot him in the head three times with a Bushmaster."
"That's fairly unnatural."
"It's natural because that's how the victim's 'personal physician'"--Malloy did the quote things with his fingers--"signed the death certificate: cerebral hemorrhage following a stroke. Your doctor does that, the death doesn't have to go to the coroner. The police weren't involved. The body was cremated. The whole thing went away."
"Hmm. Not bad. All you need is a gun, a shitload of money and a crooked doctor. I'm starting to like these particular particulars."
"And what's particularly interesting is that it was one of Prescott's books that Aaron Reilly cowrote. And the wife remembered it. That was why I went to see her."
"Check out the doctor."
"I tried. He's Spanish."
"So's half the city, in case you didn't know. We got translators, hijo."
"Not Latino. Spanish. From Spain. He's back home and I can't track him down."
The department secretary stuck her head in the doorway. "Jimmy, you got a call from a Frank Lester."
"Who'd be...?"
"A book agent. Worked with that guy Prescott you were talking about."
The former agent, he recalled. "How'd he get my number?"
"I don't know. He said he heard you were planning some memorial service and he wanted to get together with you to talk about it."
DeLeon frowned. "Memorial?"
"I had to make up something to get to see the wife." Malloy took the number, a Manhattan cell phone area code, he noticed. Called. It went to voice mail. He didn't leave a message.
Malloy turned back to his partner. "There's more. An hour ago I talked with some deputies up in Vermont. They told me that it was a private ambulance took the body away. Not one of the local outfits. The sheriff bought into the heart attack thing but he still sent a few people to the place where Prescott was hiking just to take some statements. After the ambulance left, one of the deputies saw somebody leaving the area. Male, he thinks. No description other than that, except he was carrying what looked like a briefcase or small suitcase."
"Breakdown rifle?"
"What I was thinking. And when this guy saw the cop car, he vanished fast."
"A pro?"
"Maybe. I was thinking that coauthor might've come across some connected guys in doing his research. Or maybe it was this Aaron Reilly."
"You got any ideas on how to find out?"
"As a matter of fact, I do."
*
STANDING IN THE dim frosted-glass corridor of a luxurious SoHo condo, Jimmy Malloy made sure his gun was unobstructed and rang the buzzer.
The large door swung open.
"Aaron Reilly?" Even though he recognized the coauthor from the picture at Prescott's funeral.
"Yes, that's right." The man gave a cautious grin.
Which remained in place, though it grew a wrinkle of surprise when the shield appeared. Malloy tried to figure out if the man had been expecting him--because Jane Prescott had called ahead of time--but couldn't tell.
"Come on inside, Detective."
Reilly, in his late thirties, Malloy remembered, was the opposite of Jane Prescott. He was in faded jeans and a work shirt, sleeves rolled up. A Japanese product, not a Swiss, told him the time and there was no gold dangling on him anywhere. His shoes were scuffed. He was good looking, with thick longish hair and no wedding ring.
The condo--in chic SoHo--had every right to be opulent, but, though large, it was modest and lived-in.
Not an original piece of art in the place.
Zero sculpture.
And unlike the Widow Prescott's abode, Reilly's was chockablock with books.
He gestured to the cop to sit. Malloy picked a leather chair that lowered him six inches toward the ground as it wheezed contentedly. On the wall nearby was a shelf of the books. Malloy noted one: The Paris Deception. "J.B. Prescott with Aaron Reilly" was on the spine.
Malloy was struck by the word "with." He wondered if Reilly felt bad, defensive maybe, that his contribution to the literary world was embodied in that preposition.
And if so, did he feel bad enough to kill the man who'd bestowed it and relegated him to second-class status?
"That's one of my favorites."
"So you're a fan, too."
"Yep. That's why I volunteered to come talk to you. First, I have to say I really admire your work."
"Thank you."
Malloy kept scanning the bookshelves. And found what he'd been looking for: Two entire shelves were filled with books about guns and shooting. There had to be something in one of them about rifles that could be broken down and hidden in small suitcases. They were, Malloy knew, easy to find.
"What exactly can I do for you, Detective?"
Malloy looked back. "Just a routine matter mostly. Now, technically John Prescott was a resident of the city, so his death falls partly under our jurisdiction."
"Yes, I suppose." Reilly still looked perplexed.
"Whenever there's a large estate, we're sometimes asked to look into the death, even if it's ruled accidental or illness related."
"Why would you look into it?" Reilly asked, frowning.
"Tax revenue mostly."
"Really? That's funny. It was my understanding that only government officials had jurisdiction to make inquiries like that. In fact, I researched a similar issue for one of our books. We had Jacob Sharpe following the money--you know, to find the ultimate bad guy. The police department couldn't help him. He had to go to Revenue."
It was an oops moment and Malloy realized he should have known better. Of course, the coauthor would know all about police and law enforcement procedures.
"Unless what you're really saying is that you--or somebody--think that John's death might not have been an illness at all. It was intentional...But how could it be?"
Malloy didn't want to give away his theory about the crooked doctor. He said, "Let's say I know you're a diabetic and if you don't get your insulin you'll die. I keep you from getting your injection, there's an argument that I'm guilty of murder."
"And you think somebody was with him at the time he had the heart attack and didn't call for help?"
"Just speculating. Probably how you write books."
"We're a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end."
"So that's how it works."
"Yes."
"I wondered."
"But, see, the problem with what you're suggesting is that it would be a coincidence for this somebody, who wanted him dead, to be up there in Vermont at just the moment he had the attack...We could never get away with that."
Malloy blinked. "You--?"
Reilly lifted an eyebrow. "If we put that into a book, our editor wouldn't let us get away with it."
"Still. Did he have any enemies?"
"No, none that I knew about. He was a good boss and a nice man. I can't imagine anybody'd want him dead."
"Well, I think that's about it," Malloy said. "I appreciate your time."
Reilly rose and walked the detective to the door. "Didn't you forget the most important question?"
"What's that?"
"The question our editor would insist we add at the end of an interrogation in one of the books: Where was I at the time he died?"
"I'm not accusing yo
u of anything."
"I didn't say you were. I'm just saying that a cop in a Jacob Sharpe novel would've asked the question."
"Okay. Where were you?"
"I was here in New York. And the next question?"
Malloy knew what that was: "Can anyone verify that?"
"No. I was alone all day. Writing. Sorry, but reality's a lot tougher than fiction, isn't it, Detective?"
*
"YO, LISTEN UP," the scrawny little man said. "This is interesting."
"I'm listening." Malloy tried to look pleasant as he sat across from Lucius the snitch. Before they'd met, Ralph DeLeon reminded him how Malloy had dissed the man earlier. So he was struggling to be nice.
"I followed Reilly to a Starbucks. And she was there, Prescott's wife."
"Good job," DeLeon said.
Malloy nodded. The whole reason to talk to the coauthor had been to push the man into action, not to get facts. When people are forced to act, they often get careless. And while Malloy had been at Reilly's apartment, DeLeon was arranging with a magistrate for a pen register--a record of phone calls to and from the coauthor's phones. A register won't give you the substance of the conversation but it will tell you whom a subject calls and who's calling him.
The instant Malloy left the condo, Reilly had dialed a number.
It was Jane Prescott's. And ten minutes after that, Reilly slipped out the front door, head down, moving quickly.
And tailed by Lucius, who had accompanied Malloy to Reilly's apartment and waited outside.
The scrawny snitch was now reporting on that surveillance.
"Now that Mrs. Prescott, she's pretty--"
Malloy broke in with "Hot, yeah, I know. Keep going."
"What I was going to say," the snitch offered snippily, "before I was interrupted, is that she's pretty tough. Kind of scary, you ask me."
"True," Malloy conceded.
"Reilly starts out talking about you being there." Lucius poked a bony finger at Malloy, which seemed like a dig but he let it go--as DeLeon's lifted eyebrow was instructing. "And you were suspecting something. And making up shit about some police procedures and estate tax or something. He thought it was pretty stupid."
Lucius seemed to enjoy adding that. DeLeon, too, apparently.
"And the wife said, yeah, you were making up something at her place, too. About a memorial service or something. Which she didn't believe. And then she said--get this. Are you ready?"
Malloy refrained from glaring at Lucius, whose psyche apparently was as fragile as fine porcelain. He smiled. "I'm ready."
"The wife says that this whole problem was Reilly's fucking fault for coming up with the same idea he'd used in a book--bribing a doctor to fake a death certificate."
He and DeLeon exchanged glances.
Lucius continued, "And then she said, 'Now we're fucked. What're you going to do about it?' Meaning Reilly. Not you." Another finger at Malloy. He sat back, smugly satisfied.
"Anything else?"
"No, that was it."
"Good job," Malloy said with a sarcastic flourish that only DeLeon noted. He slipped an envelope to the snitch.
After Lucius left, happy at last, Malloy said, "Pretty good case."
"Pretty good, but not great," the partner replied slowly. "There's the motive issue. Okay, she wants to kill her husband for the insurance or the estate and a younger man. But what's Reilly's motive? Killing Prescott's killing his golden goose."
"Oh, I got that covered." Malloy pulled out his BlackBerry and scrolled down to find something he'd discovered earlier.
He showed it to DeLeon.
Book News.
The estate of the late J.B. Prescott has announced that his coauthor Aaron Reilly has been selected to continue the author's series featuring the popular Jacob Sharpe character. Prescott's widow is presently negotiating a five-book contract with the author's long-time publisher, Hutton-Fielding. Neither party is talking about money at this point but insiders believe the deal will involve an eight-figure advance.
Ralph DeLeon said, "Looks like we got ourselves a coupla perps."
*
BUT NOT QUITE YET.
At 11 p.m. Jimmy Malloy was walking from the subway stop in Queens to his house six blocks away. He was thinking of how he was going to put the case together. There were still loose ends. The big pain was the cremation thing. Burning is a bitch, one instructor at the academy had told Malloy's class. Fire gets rid of nearly all important evidence. Like bullet holes in the head.
What he'd have to do is get wiretaps, line up witnesses, track down the ambulance drivers, the doctor in Spain.
It was discouraging, but it was also just part of the job. He laughed to himself. It was like Jacob Sharpe and his "tradecraft," as he called it. Working your ass off to do your duty. And just then he saw some motion 100 feet ahead, a person. Something about the man's mannerism, his body language set off Malloy's cop radar.
A man had emerged from a car and was walking along the same street that Malloy was now on. After he'd happened to glance back at the detective, he'd stiffened and changed direction fast. Malloy was reminded of the killer in Vermont, disappearing quickly after spotting the deputy.
Who was this? The pro? Aaron Reilly?
And did he have the breakdown rifle or another weapon with him? Malloy had to assume he did.
The detective crossed the street and tried to guess where the man was. Somewhere in front of him, but where? Then he heard a dog bark and another and he understood the guy was cutting through people's yards, back on the other side of the street.
The detective pressed ahead, scanning the area, looking for the logical place where the man had vanished. He decided it had to be an alleyway that led to the right, between two commercial buildings, both of them empty and dark at this time of night.
As he came to the alley, Malloy pulled up. He didn't immediately look around the corner. He'd been moving fast and breathing hard, probably scuffling his feet, too. The killer would have heard him approach.
Be smart, he told himself.
Don't be a hero.
He pulled out his phone and began to dial 911.
Which was when he heard a snap behind him. A foot on a small branch or bit of crisp leaf.
And felt the muzzle of the gun prod his back as a gloved hand reached out and lifted the phone away.
We're a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end.
Well, Prescott's wife and coauthor had done just that: come up with a perfect plot. Maybe the man on the street a moment ago was Reilly, acting as bait. And it was the professional killer who'd come up behind him.
Maybe even Jane Prescott herself.
She's pretty tough...
The detective had another thought. Maybe it was none of his suspects. Maybe the former agent, Frank Lester, had been bitter about being fired by his client and killed Prescott for revenge. Malloy had never followed up on that lead.
Hell, dying because he'd been careless...
Then the hand tugged on his shoulder slightly, indicating he should turn around.
Malloy did, slowly.
He blinked as he looked up into the eyes of the man who'd snuck up behind him.
They'd never met but the detective knew exactly what J.B. Prescott looked like. His face was on the back jackets of a dozen books in Malloy's living room.
*
"SORRY FOR THE SCARE," Prescott explained, putting away the pen he'd used as a gun muzzle--ironic touch that, Malloy noted, as his heart continued to slam in his chest.
The author continued, "I wanted to intercept you before you got home. But I didn't think you'd get here so soon. I had to come up behind you and make you think I had a weapon so you didn't call in a ten-thirteen. That would have been a disaster."
"Intercept?" Malloy asked. "Why?"
They were sitting in the alleyway, on the stairs of a loading dock.
"I needed to talk to you," Prescott said. The man had a large mane of gray hair and a matching mustache that bisected his lengthy face. He looked like an author ought to look.
"You could've called," Malloy snapped.
"No, I couldn't. If somebody had overheard or if you'd told anyone I was alive, my whole plot would've been ruined."
"Okay, what the hell is going on?"
Prescott lowered his head to his hands and didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, "For the past eighteen months I've been planning my own death. It took that long to find a doctor, an ambulance crew, a funeral director I could bribe. And find some remote land in Spain where we could buy a place and nobody would disturb me."
"So you were the one the police saw walking away from where you'd supposedly had the heart attack in Vermont."
He nodded.
"What were you carrying? A suitcase?"
"Oh, my laptop. I'm never without it. I write all the time."
"Then who was in the ambulance?"
"Nobody. It was just for show."
"And at the cemetery, an empty urn in the plot?"
"That's right."
"But why on earth would you do this? Debts? Is the mob after you?"
A laugh. "I'm worth fifty million dollars. And I may write about the mob and spies and government agents, but I've never actually met one...No, I'm doing this because I've decided to give up writing the Jacob Sharpe books."
"Why?"
"Because it's time for me to try something different: publish what I first started writing, years ago, poetry and literary stories."
Malloy remembered this from the obit.
Prescott explained quickly: "Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think literature's any better than commercial fiction, not at all. People who say that are fools. But when I tried my hand at literature when I was young, I didn't have any skill. I was self-indulgent, digressive...boring. Now I know how to write. The Jacob Sharpe books taught me how. I learned how to think about the audience's needs, how to structure my stories, how to communicate clearly."
"Tradecraft," Malloy said.
The author gave a laugh. "Yes, tradecraft. I'm not a young man. I decided I wasn't going to die without seeing if I could make a success of it."
"Well, why fake your death? Why not just write what you wanted to?"
"For one thing, I'd get my poems published because I was J.B. Prescott. My publishers around the world would pat me on the head and say, 'Anything you want, J.B.' No, I want my work accepted or rejected on its own merits. But more important, if I just stopped writing the Sharpe series my fans would never forgive me. Look what happened to Sherlock Holmes."