Authors: Deirdre Savoy
Body Of Truth (23 page)
He laughed, but with none of the humor she'd hoped to bring out in him. “Go to sleep, Dana,” he whispered against her ear.
With an exasperated sigh she lay her head on his chest and shut her eyes. Maybe she should have left him alone, since he seemed to be more withdrawn now than before. Maybe she'd manage to straighten things between them in the morning. But when she woke up he was already gone.
Sixteen
Jonathan arrived in the squad room the next morning to find Mari's chair empty. He was about to congratulate himself on getting there first until he noticed her coming back from the coffee room, mug in hand.
“Am I mistaken, or do you sleep here?” he asked as she took her seat across from him.
“Sometimes.”
He shook his head. Even he wasn't that bad. “Anything shaking?”
“We got a few call backs from the folks we didn't reach on Saturday. I made a few appointments for this afternoon, after we see Rossi.”
“Good.” Martinez and Russell would be speaking with Stan Nichols's secretary this morning. He figured he didn't need to be here for that, since he doubted she'd provide them with anything useful. Nichols's record showed a couple of busts, but nothing major, nothing recent, and nothing anyone had made stick. If he owned a gun, it wasn't one he'd bothered to register. But Jonathan wouldn't mind finding out some dirt on her boss, however. Something that would keep him off the streets for a good long while.
“Any word on Pee Wee yet?” The uniforms had been out beating the bushes for him since Saturday morning. That's what Tyree had come to see him about. Half his friends had complained about being rousted from their usual hang out spots by cops looking for the drug dealer. Tyree had wanted to know if this had anything to do with his case. He'd told Tyree to stay home and watch his mother and Dana, fearing the teenager would do something foolish to try to impress him, or more likely, Dana.
“Not as far as I know.”
Jonathan checked his watch. It was after eight. “Any word about Moretti yet?”
“He hasn't deigned to grace us with his presence yet.”
Jonathan gritted his teeth. He'd known Moretti would make it as difficult as possible to work together, but not bothering to show up on time was plain juvenile. He didn't have time to waste on the man, however. He and Mari needed to leave now if they were going to make it to Rossi's place in the city by nine. He'd have to deal with Moretti later.
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Sam Rossi's apartment was in a high-rise doorman building on Central Park West. The seventy-four-year-old man met them at his apartment door wearing khaki pants and a golf shirt. With his deeply lined face, Mediterranean complexion, curly salt and pepper hair, he could have passed for Tony Bennett's older, harder drinking brother. At least the image of Tony Bennett Jonathan remembered. “Come in, Detectives,” Rossi said. “I hope you don't mind discussing this in my office.”
“Not at all.” As Rossi led them through the apartment, Jonathan looked around. There was something familiar about the décor, but he couldn't place from where.
He stopped at the open doorway to a small room that faced onto the park. “Make yourselves at home.” Jonathan sat at the chair nearest to the desk, while Mari took a spot by the bookcases that lined one wall, examining their contents.
Rossi slid into a chair behind the desk, offering Jonathan an expansive smile. Rossi could afford to be magnanimous. Although a powerhouse in the underworld for most of his life, the statute of limitations on any crime the NYPD had looked at him for had long since expired.
Rossi leaned back in his chair. “Sorry to take so long to get back to you, Detectives, but my wife and I were at our country home in the Hamptons. I'm not really sure what I can do to help you. You're investigating Amanda Pierce's death, right? I never met the woman.”
“You were involved with the Trinity project that Father Malone was a part of.”
“We were both on the board of directors.” Rossi looked from him to Mari and back. “That's what you want to know about? That happened twenty-five years ago.”
“Ms. Pierce was investigating the events surrounding Father Malone's death when she was murdered.”
“Why? Brendan's death was an accident. That's what the police said at the time. I'm sure that was in the report.”
“There were also rumors that Malone might have been killed because he was cheating his business partners, namely you.”
“Right. Let me tell you something about Brendan. We grew up in a tough neighborhood. We were tough. We had to be. East New York is no place for sissies. Brendan got straight in the can. I didn't. But so what? He was like a brother to me. I would have done anything for him.”
“Including splitting whatever you were skimming off the project?”
“Hey, I wasn't skimming anything.” He sighed. “But Brendan found out I was taking kickbacks from some of the unions working on the job. Force of habit.” He shrugged. “But Brendan was worse than a reformed smoker. You know once they give it up they expect everybody else to do the same. He guilted me into building that playground that's in back of the place with my own money. If I'd wanted to kill him I would have done it then.”
“Sounds like a real saint.”
Rossi laughed. “Yeah, for the most part. Even when we were back in the neighborhood he wouldn't stand for anybody picking on somebody weaker than them. But here's something nobody really knew about him. He used to bet on the Catholic school teams, you know, basketball, football. I used to call them in to a . . . a . . . friend for him. And as for the priest's vow of sobriety, I think Brendan skipped class the day they taught that at the seminary. He could drink the best of them under the table. Always could.”
These were qualities in a priest to be celebrated? Maybe not, but it did make Malone seem more human. His utter renouncement of the life he had known had always rung false to Jonathan's mind. And there was no mistaking the fondness in Rossi's voice as he talked about him. It would be hard to imagine many men who would kill a friend they regarded so highly, but Rossi wasn't like most men. “Where were you the night he died?”
“At the opera, with my wife. We'd gone out as a foursome. The soprano was bad and the couple were dead bores. I was thinking that my night couldn't get any worse until I got the call telling me that Brendan was gone.”
“We'll need to check that out with your wife.”
“Sure.” He pressed a button on the phone on his desk and the sound of a dial tone filled the room. He punched another number, which connected to, Jonathan presumed, the house in the Hamptons. Soon a woman's voice came on. “Hi, honey. I've got those detectives here I told you about. What were we doing the night Brendan died?”
Without hesitation, Mrs. Rossi answered, “We were at the opera with some horrible couple. I don't even remember their names. Why?”
“It's nothing. I'll be home tonight.” He disconnected the call and sat back in his chair. “Will that do?”
Jonathan scanned the other man's face. Aside from his wife's convenient memory, there was something disingenuous in his countenance, something he held back. Jonathan was sure of it, though he couldn't imagine what.
Mari took care of it for him. “You say you never met Amanda Pierce? She never came to you seeking information about her uncle's past?”
“Yeah, but I blew her off. She didn't say what she wanted to talk to me about. I knew her reputation. I was worried she wanted to write a book about me.”
As they drove back to the city, Mari asked him, “Do you believe that nonsense about him thinking she wanted to write a book about him?”
“No, I don't.” Not only wasn't Rossi the type of subject she preferred, but if he had so much loyalty for Malone, why wouldn't he have met with the man's niece, regardless of the situation? “Why don't you?”
“Did you notice the color scheme in Rossi's place is almost identical to the one in Pierce's place?”
That hadn't occurred to him, actually. He'd only noted that it seemed familiar somehow. “No.”
“And the plants. They were all fakes, like in Pierce's place. Remember, she was an asthmatic? Many asthmatics can't tolerate plants.”
“What are you suggesting? That Pierce and Rossi were sleeping together?” If that were true, there was no mention of any birth control method being prescribed by her doctor. Coupled with the m.e.'s speculation that she hadn't engaged in sex in a long while he'd assumed she wasn't seeing anybody at the time.
“Could be. I find it hard to believe that a fairly young, attractive woman like her wasn't getting any.”
“Your mind is much more devious than mine.”
“Don't you forget it.”
Mari's cell phone rang. She answered the call, spoke for a few minutes, about what he couldn't determine, hearing only her end. When she disconnected the call, there was a big grin on her face.
“Well?”
“Some kid just phoned in a tip about where Pee Wee is. Seems he's holed up in Queens at some woman's house. They're going to check it out now.”
Some kid? If it turned out to be Tyree, he was going to wring that child's neck.
By the time they got back to the stationhouse, Moretti was sitting at a desk vacated by one of the older officers when he retired. He was leaning forward, talking on the phone. His body language and hushed tone suggested the call had nothing to do with work. He looked up when they came in, but kept talking, a defiant expression on his face.
“This way, Stone,” Mari said, waving him toward his own desk.
Until then he hadn't realized he'd stopped walking or that his hands had formed into fists at his sides. He knew better than to let an asshole like Moretti get to him. But knowing better and doing better weren't always the same thing.
He slung his jacket on the back of his chair and sat. He glanced over at Mari, who was skimming through one of the files. “What are you doing?”
“I'm looking through Pierce's medical file. Maybe there's something we missed.”
“Like what?”
Mari looked up at him. “When are the two times a woman doesn't use birth control?”
“When she's trying to get pregnant. When she's already pregnant.”
“Okay, then there are three.”
“When she can't get pregnant?”
“Bingo. I wish I knew what the medical notation for that would be.”
He thought of calling Dana to ask her. Actually, it wasn't the first time he'd thought of calling her, but since he had no idea what he'd say to her if he did, he didn't bother. “What's her doctor's number?” As Mari read off the numbers he punched them into the phone on his desk. The nurse who answered the call told him that the doctor was in with a patient and that she'd call back. Jonathan hung up, intending to pass on the message, but Mari was already on the phone.
“Thanks so much, Mr. Banks,” she said into the phone. “Yes, we'll keep you informed of our progress. Have a safe trip.” Mari hung up and grinned at him. “I'm right again. According to her brother she couldn't have kids. Her marriage broke up because of it.”
“That doesn't prove she was sleeping with Rossi.”
“No, but it takes us one step closer. That only means I have to dig deeper.”
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