Cold Hit (22 page)

“I hope by paying your respects to the deceased you got more than I did from the widow,” I said to them as I reentered the room. “A bit of art history and a hunch that Denise Caxton was nothing but trouble.”

“Then I’d say Mrs. Varelli’s got great instincts. Remember that case I had a few years back in Spanish Harlem? The Argentinian dancer, Augusto Mango, who died prematurely during a sexual encounter with a rabid fan?”

“Very well.”

“You know how we found out it was murder and not a bad heart?”

“No.”

“Some doctor declared him dead at the scene. I think he must have been a podiatrist. Then, at the funeral parlor, while they were combing his hair into place, the mortician found a bullet hole in the back of his head. Small caliber, barely the trace of an entry. The fan’s husband was the killer.
Post
headline was
Don’t Tango with Mango
.

“Well, Mr. Zuppelo wouldn’t make such a good barber.”

Mike carefully turned Marco Varelli’s head away from us and smoothed the thick white hair back from his left ear, much as he had done at Spuyten Duyvil when we first saw the body of Denise Caxton. There was the unmistakable mark that a bullet had pierced the skull of the gentle old man.

“Criminal court press room — where every crime’s a story and every story’s a crime. Mickey Diamond here.” The veteran
New York Post
reporter had covered the courthouse for longer than anyone could remember, and answered the phone with his usual élan on Thursday morning.

“What did you think you were doing by running that story this morning?” I asked when I called, trying to control my temper.

Pat McKinney had left a copy of the page-three clipping on my desk, quoting me in an article about the Caxton murder investigation. Battaglia had an inviolable policy about assistants talking to the press. He enforced it rigidly, and he was right to do so. With more than six hundred lawyers in the office and three hundred thousand matters a year coming through our complaint room, it would have been insane to let prosecutors comment on cases they handled. First I had called Rose Malone, urging her to let Battaglia know that Mickey’s feature was pure fiction, and then I had dialed the newsroom.

“Slow news day, Alex. My editor was begging me for a story.”

I looked at the lead paragraph in the piece, in which Diamond attributed to me a statement about a major break in the case.

“If we’re close to a solution, as you say I say, then it truly is news to me,” I told him. The story reported that, working closely with detectives from the Manhattan North Homicide Squad, I had discovered the motive in the Caxton killing and an arrest was imminent. “Battaglia will be furious when he reads this. It’s bullshit, but now he’ll get pressure from the mayor to make an arrest, and we don’t even have a suspect yet.”

“The truth is so rare, Alex. I like to use it sparingly.” He laughed at his own joke, knowing that I wouldn’t. “Straighten me out. Give me some real scoop to go with. Maybe this’ll make the killer show his hand — he’ll think you know more about him than you do.”

“Thanks for the help, Mickey. When he turns himself in because of your story, I’ll make sure you get the reward money.” If nothing else, I confirmed that word of Marco Varelli’s murder had not yet leaked to the press. Diamond would have been all over me if he’d heard what we had discovered last night.

We had broken the news to Varelli’s widow just as mourners had gathered for the evening visit to the funeral home. Her initial shock at the fact that her husband had been nated was replaced with her proud resolve that she had known he had not died of natural causes. Bravely, she composed herself and greeted their friends and associates for more than two hours, while we mingled with the small crowd in the room.

She had finally thanked Chapman warmly and then turned to tell me good night. “You see, Miss Cooper, I was sure that Marco Varelli would never have chosen to leave me. Such was his love, such was his life.”

The funeral was to be on Friday, after the second night of the wake, and she invited us to come to her nearby apartment the next week.

Mike had gotten her permission to seal Marco’s atelier last night and secure it with patrolmen. He would go back later today to process it with the detectives from the Crime Scene Unit. We needed her, or one of Varelli’s workmen, to help discover whether any artworks or valuables were missing. That might have to wait until after the burial.

Finally, when everyone left the dingy funeral home, Mike and Mercer had arranged for the Medical Examiner’s Office to pick up the body of Marco Varelli for an autopsy.

I had come downtown to work, busying myself in the review of new cases till I could meet Mike or Mercer in Chelsea. We were going back to Galleria Caxton Due to talk to Bryan Daughtry again, as well as to oversee the execution of the search warrant.

It was Mercer who phoned at eleven thirty to tell me he was leaving his office to go to West Twenty-second Street. Mike had witnessed the proceeding on Varelli at the morgue, which had validated his discovery at the funeral parlor, and would join up with us in Chelsea.

I drove my Jeep up to the gallery thinking about Denise Caxton, Omar Sheffield, and Marco Varelli. What common factor in their lives so closely linked them in death?

I parked right in front and walked to the Empire Diner, where I sipped another cup of coffee until the guys arrived a few minutes later.

“You got the warrants?” Mike asked, slipping into the booth along with Mercer, who had met him at the front door.

“Everything we need.”

We walked across the street and down the block, where the entrance to the gallery’s garage was blocked by a radio car. One of the uniformed officers saw us coming, recognized Mike, and got out to say hello.

“Hey, Chapman, how’s it going? Been a long time. I thought you did steady midnights?”

“Used to be, Jack. Now I’m afraid of the dark — doing day tours. Any action here?”

“He ain’t givin’ us any trouble. A little pedestrian traffic around, but no packages going without gettin’ searched, and no trucks in or out. Same report from yesterday.”

A receptionist met us inside the front door. “Mr. Daughtry thought you might be coming in sometime this afternoon. He’s upstairs with a client. I can make you comfortable down here, if you’d—”

“No thanks,” Mike said, ignoring the young woman and leading us to the elevator in the far corner. When we reached the top floor and stepped out onto the landing, there was no sign of Daughtry on the walkway. Mercer headed over to see whether he was in his corner office, while Mike and I looked out at the old railroad tracks again.

“My father used to tell me the stories about the gangs from Hell’s Kitchen who terrorized the train lines — the Hudson Dusters, the Gophers. When he was a kid, he hung out in a saloon right up the street here, running errands for a guy named Mallet Murphy. Called him that ’cause he’d crack disorderly customers over the head with a meat hammer.”

Mike leaned back against the waist-high iron rail as he looked out at this view of Chelsea. He couldn’t have been any happier if you’d sat him at the top of the Eiffel Tower. This was his father’s home turf, and the neighborhood held his family roots.

“This view could change my whole opinion of both Denise Caxton and Bryan Daughtry. It’s really cool that they left the old tracks in place.” He turned and noted the Plexiglas doorway that led out of the gallery onto the tracks.

“Hey, Coop, someday after me and Daughtry have put our differences aside, I’ll walk you and Mercer out that very door, onto the tracks, and take you as far downtown as it goes. Tell you stories about real gangsters and show you where the bones are buried.”

“We’re down here, Mr. Chapman. As long as you’ve made yourselves at home, why don’t you come tell me what you need?” Daughtry called up to us from somewhere a level or two below. I couldn’t see him from where I was standing, but he had obviously been alerted to our arrival.

The catwalk around the edge of the upper floor was about four feet wide. The three of us walked around its perimeter until we came to a metal staircase that led down a level.

Here the space extended out over the track below, and there were couches and sitting areas that faced various exhibits on the vast walls that ringed the gallery.

Bryan Daughtry and another man were seated facing each other in brown leather armchairs. Daughtry stood to reach for Chapman’s hand.

“Let me guess,” Mike said, looking at two yellow columns positioned next to each other and representing some sort of sculpture. “
The Cat in the Hat
?”

“Shall I read to you from our brochure, Detective? ‘A minimal freestanding work, this kinetic fiberglass piece conveys a charming, vertiginous uncertainty.’ Like it? Or do you prefer the one behind me? A very creative new fellow — uses beeswax, hazelnut pollen, marble, and rice to make sculptures, as we say, ‘of mute yet implacable force.’ ”

“Come to think of it, my apartment looks fine with a couple of NFL posters, a slightly used baseball signed by Bernie Williams, and an eight-by-ten glossy of Tina Turner that Miss Cooper gave me. Your stuff makes me wanna puke.”

“Shall we go back up to my office?” Daughtry asked.

Mercer and I started to follow him. Mike stretched out his arm to Daughtry’s companion, who remained seated as I started to walk away.

“Hi. Sorry to break this up. I’m Mike Chapman. Homicide. You are…?”

The attractive dark-haired man, who I guessed to be about forty years old, stood up and smiled, returning the handshake. “I’m Frank Wrenley. How do you do?”

“Well, well, well — Mr. Wrenley. And how do
you
do? Tell you what — c’mon upstairs with us. I got a few questions for you when we’re done with Mr. Daughtry.”

“Of course. I assumed you’d want to talk to me about Deni. I’m happy to try to help.”

Mercer whispered to me as we walked to the narrow staircase, “You and Mike go at Daughtry. I’ll baby-sit Wrenley till you’re done, so he doesn’t make any calls while he’s waiting. This is a rare opportunity to get him when he wasn’t expecting us.”

Mike and I settled into the dealer’s office with him. “Like I told you, we got a warrant to go through your gallery and warehouse. A team of detectives will be here shortly to do that. You can make this real easy on yourself if you wanna give us most of what we ask for, which are Deni’s business records and belongings, access to the contents of Omar’s locker, and things like — well, look at the papers for yourself.

“We’d also like to look through some of the paintings you’ve got stored here.”

“Anything in particular you’re looking for? Your taste in art, Mr. Chapman, is so hard for me to define.”

“Got any Rembrandts on hand?”

“So you’re joining the search for the mythical Holy Grail, too? Everybody’s looking for the big score. You’ve got a better chance of winning the lottery than finding that missing painting.”

“Then you won’t mind if we look, will you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Had you and Deni talked about it? I mean, about
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee
?”

“Many, many times. But so did everyone else in our business.”

“Seems to me,” Mike said, “that if I were an ex-con sitting on a hot item, my best bet would be to contact somebody else in the same shoes. I wouldn’t be likely to walk into a classy operation where they might give me up to the Feds just for talkin’ to them, but I’d sure be likely to sniff out some creep who’d done time and was completely amoral.”

“What do you want me to say, Detective? ‘Sticks and stones’?”

“Look, we know someone offered Deni the Rembrandt. And we even know about her meetings with Marco Varelli, to authenticate the chips.”

Daughtry met Mike’s stare head-on. “That’s the oldest trick in the book, Mr. Chapman. Varelli is dead. Don’t expect me to believe he summoned you to his bedside just before he had the big one. I doubt you ever spoke to him. Not much of a talker, that man. Try me again, harder this time.”

“Lowell Caxton told us about the hijacking of the Della Spiga paintings last June. Said to ask you why it made Deni so crazy.”

“Well, I assume the disappearance of a truckload of any artist’s work would make his dealer berserk. Caxton Due represented Della Spiga. The whole thing was rather odd. Nobody ever saw who stole the truck, so we don’t even know whether or not the thieves were armed. Deni had actually rented an eighteen-wheeler from a soda delivery company so the truck would be inconspicuous on the highway. After the drivers made a stop for coffee on the thruway, they came out of McDonald’s and the truck had disappeared.”

“Never found it?”

“To the contrary. It was found the next day, abandoned behind an old factory upstate. Not a thing missing. Either the thieves didn’t like Della Spiga or they were looking for cola and not art.”

“What did Deni think?”

“That first night? She was wild. Figured it had to be an inside job, someone who knew she was shipping fine art but disguising the delivery truck. When every painting was found intact, she calmed down and assumed the hijacking was just a coincidence. Amateur soda swipers foiled again.”

“So maybe somebody did think she had the Rembrandt and was slipping the stolen painting in with the transport of the Della Spigas?”

“One might have thought that to see how upset she got. But of course, Detective Chapman, the police who found the truck went through it and listed every item on it. No Rembrandt recovered. And Deni was far, far too relieved the next day to have been missing one great masterpiece.”

Mike jumped back a year in his next question.

“That trip to England that Lowell made alone the June before — the one that broke the marriage apart. What were you and Deni up to that kept her away, that kept her so busy here?”

“Try as you might, Chapman, you won’t mix me in this soup. Whatever it was, Deni never let me in on it. But you’re right, it was serious. Whoever called her, whoever contacted her — someone made an offer she couldn’t refuse. She withdrew from me completely and was very secretive. It bothered me at the time, but after a few days she changed her mind and went off to join Lowell. You obviously know the rest. I didn’t think any more of it. Figured she’d been onto a deal and that it must have fallen through. Happens all the time in this business.”