French Kiss (2 page)

The suffocating air on
Madison Avenue almost shimmers with heat.

Where have all the beautiful people gone? East Hampton? Bar Harbor? The South of France?

I walk the block. I watch a man polish the handrail alongside the steps of Saint James' Church. I see the tourists line up outside Ladurée, the French
macaron
store.

A young African American man, maybe eighteen years old, walks near me. He is bare-chested. He seems even sweatier than I am. The young man's T-shirt is tied around his neck, and he is guzzling from a quart-size bottle of water.

“Where'd you get that?” I ask.

“A dude like you can go to that fancy-ass cookie store. You got five bills, that'll get you a soda there,” he says.

“But where'd you get
that
bottle, the water you're drinking?” I ask again.

“Us poor bros go to Kenny's. You're practically in it right now.”

He gestures toward 71st Street between Madison and Park Avenues. As the kid moves away, I figure that the “fancy-ass cookie store” is Ladurée. I am equidistant between a five-dollar soda and a cheaper but larger bottle of water. Why waste Papa's generous allowance on fancy-ass soda?

Kenny's is a tiny storefront, a place you should find closer to Ninth Avenue than Madison Avenue. Behind the counter is a Middle Eastern-type guy. Kenny? He peddles only newspapers, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and, for some reason, Dial soap.

I examine the contents of Kenny's small refrigerated case. It holds many bottles, all of them the same—the no-name water that the shirtless young man was drinking. At the moment that water looks to me like heaven in a bottle.

“I'm going to take two of these bottles,” I say.

“One second, please, sir,” says the man behind the counter, then he addresses another man who is wheeling four brown cartons of candy into the store. The cartons are printed with the name and logo for Snickers. The man steering the dolly looks very much like the counterman. Is he Kenny? Is anybody Kenny? I consider buying a Snickers bar. No. The wet Armani suit is already growing tighter.

“How many more boxes are there, Hector?” the counterman asks.

“At least fifteen more,” comes the response. Then “Kenny” turns to me.

“And you, sir?” the counterman asks.

“No. Nothing,” I say. “Sorry.”

I leave the tiny store and break into a run. I am around the corner on Madison Avenue. I punch the button on my phone marked 4. Direct connection to Martinez. All I can think is:
What the hell? Twenty cartons of candy stored in a shop the size of a closet? Twenty cartons of Snickers in a store that doesn't even sell candy?

She answers and starts talking immediately. “Williams and I are getting nowhere with these two assholes. This whole thing sucks. Our intelligence is all screwed up. There's nothing here.”

I am only slightly breathless, only slightly nervous.

“Listen to me. It's all here, where I am. I know it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she says.

“A newsstand between Madison and Park. Kenny's. I'm less than two hundred feet away from you guys. Leave one person at Taylor Antiquities and get everyone over here. Now.”

“How—?”

“The two vans, the garage…that's all a decoy,” I say. “The real shit is being unloaded here…in cartons of candy bars.”

“How do you know?”

“Like the case in Pigalle.
I know because I know.
”

One month later. It's
another sweltering summer day in Manhattan.

A year ago I was working in the detective room at the precinct on rue Achille-Martinet in Paris. Today I'm working in the detective room at the precinct on East 51st Street in Manhattan.

But the crime is absolutely the same. In both cities, men, women, and children sell drugs, kill for drugs, and all too often die for drugs.

My desk faces Maria Martinez's scruffy desk. She's not in yet. Uh-oh. She may be picking up my bad habits.
Pas possible
. Not Maria.

I drink my coffee and begin reading the blotter reports of last night's arrests. No murders, no drug busts. So much for interesting blotter reports.

I call my coolest, hippest, chicest New York contact—Patrick, one of the doormen at 15 Central Park West, where I live with Dalia. Patrick is trying to score me a dinner reservation at Rao's, the impossible-to-get-into restaurant in East Harlem.

Merde.
I am on my cell phone when my boss, Inspector Nick Elliott, the chief inspector for my division, stops by. I hold up my “just a minute” index finger. Since the Taylor Antiquities drug bust I have a little money in the bank with my boss, but it won't last forever, and this hand gesture certainly won't help.

At last I sigh. No tables. Maybe next month. When I hang up the phone I say, “I'm sorry, Inspector. I was just negotiating a favor with a friend who might be able to score me a table at Rao's next week.”

Elliott scowls and says, “Far be it from me to interrupt your off-duty life, Moncrief, but you may have noticed that your partner isn't at her desk.”

“I noticed. Don't forget, I'm a detective.”

He ignores my little joke.

“In case you're wondering, Detective Martinez is on loan to Vice for two days.”

“Why didn't you or Detective Martinez tell me this earlier? You must have known before today.”

“Yeah, I knew about it yesterday, but I told Martinez to hold off telling you. That it would just piss you off to be left out, and I was in no rush to listen to you get pissed off,” Elliott says.

“So why
wasn't
I included?” I ask.

“You weren't necessary. They just needed a woman. Though I don't owe you any explanations about assignments.”

The detective room has grown quieter. I'm sure that a few of my colleagues—especially the men—are enjoying seeing Elliott put me in my place.

Fact is, I like Elliott; he's a pretty straight-arrow guy, but I have been developing a small case of paranoia about being excluded from hot assignments.

“What can Maria do that I can't do?” I ask.

“If you can't answer that, then that pretty-boy face of yours isn't doing you much good,” Elliott says with a laugh. Then his tone of voice turns serious.

“Anyway, we got something going on up the road a piece. They got a situation at Brioni. That's a fancy men's store just off Fifth Avenue. Get a squad car driver to take you there. Right now.”

“Which Brioni?” I ask.

“I just told you—Brioni on Fifth Avenue.”

“There are
two
Brionis: 57 East 57th Street and 55 East 52nd Street,” I say.

Elliott begins to walk away. He stops. He turns to me. He speaks.

“You
would
know something like that.”

What's the one question
that's guaranteed to piss off any New York City detective or cop?

“Don't you guys have anything better to do with your time?”

If you're a cop who's ever ticketed someone for running a red light; if you're a detective who's ever asked a mother why her child wasn't in school that day, then you've heard it.

I enter the Brioni store, at 57 East 57th Street. My ego is bruised, and my mood is lousy. Frankly, I am usually in Brioni as a customer, not a policeman. Plus, is there nothing more humiliating than an eager detective sent to investigate a shoplifting crime?

I'm in an even lousier mood when the first thing I'm asked is, “Don't you guys have anything better to do with your time?” The suspect doesn't ask this question. No. It comes from one of the arresting officers, a skinny young African American guy who is at the moment cuffing a young African American kid. The minor has been nabbed by store security. He was trying to lift three cashmere sweaters, and now the kid is scared as shit.

“You should know better than to ask that question,” I say to the cop. “Meanwhile, take the cuffs off the kid.”

The cop does as he's told, but he clearly does not know when to shut up. So he speaks.

“Sorry, Detective. I just meant that it's pretty unusual to send a detective out on an arrest that's so…so…”

He is searching for a word, and I supply it. “Unimportant.”

“Yeah, that's it,” the young officer says. “Unimportant.”

The officer now realizes that the subject is closed. He gives me some details. The kid, age twelve, was brought in for petty robbery this past February. But I'm only half listening. I'm pissed off, and I'm pissed off because the cop is right—it's unimportant. This case is incredibly unimportant, laughably unimportant. It's ridiculous to be sent on such a stupid little errand. Other NYPD detectives are unraveling terrorist plots, going undercover to frame mob bosses. Me, I'm overseeing the arrest of a little kid who stole three cashmere sweaters.

As Maria Martinez has often said to me, “Someone with your handsome face and your expensive suit shouldn't be sent on anything but the most important assignments.” Then she'd laugh, and I would stare at her in stony silence…until I also laughed.

“We have the merch all bagged,” says the other officer. The name Callahan is on his nameplate. Callahan is a guy with very pink cheeks and an even pinker nose. He looks maybe thirty-five or forty…or whatever age a cop is when he's smart enough not to ask “Don't you have anything better to do with your time?”

“Thanks,” I say.

But what I'm really thinking about is:
Who the hell gave me this nauseatingly
petite
assignment?

I'm sure it's not Elliott. Ah,
oui,
the inspector and I aren't exactly what they call best buds, but he's grown used to me. He thinks he's being funny when he calls me Pretty Boy, but he also trusts me, and, like almost everyone else, he's very pleased with the bust I (almost single-handedly) helped pull off at Taylor Antiquities.

I know that my partner, Maria Martinez, puts out good press on me. As I've said, she and I are simpatico, to say the least. I like her. She likes me. Case closed.

Beyond that, anyone higher than Elliott doesn't know I exist. So I can't assume that one of the assistant commissioners or one of the ADAs is out to get me.

“There's a squad car outside to bring him in,” Callahan says.

“Hold on a minute. I want to talk to the kid,” I say.

I walk over to the boy. He wears jeans cut off at midcalf, very clean white high-top sneakers, and an equally clean white T-shirt. It's a look I could live without.

“Why'd you try to steal three sweaters? It's the goddamn middle of summer, and you're stealing sweaters. Are you stupid?”

I can tell that if he starts talking he's going to cry.

No answer. He looks away. At the ceiling. At the floor. At the young cop and Callahan.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Sixteen,” he says. My instinct was right. He does start to cry. He squints hard, trying to stem the flow of tears.

“You're a lousy liar
and
a lousy thief. You're twelve. You're in the system. Don't you think the officers checked? You were picked up five months ago. You and a friend tried to hold up a liquor store on East Tremont. They got you then, too. You
are
stupid.”

The kid shouts at me. No tears now.

“I ain't stupid. I kinda thought they'd have a buzzer or some shit in the liquor store. And I kinda felt that fat-ass guy here with the ugly-mother brown shoes was a security guy. But I don't know. Both times I decided to try it. I decided…I'm not sure why.”

“Listen. Good advice number one. Kids who are assholes turn into grown-ups who are assholes.

“Good advice number two. If you've got smart instincts,
follow them
. You know what? Forget good advice. You've got a feeling? Go with it.”

He sort of nods in agreement. So I keep talking.

“Look, asshole. This advice is life advice. I'm not trying to teach you how to be a better thief. I'm just trying to…oh, shit…I don't know what I'm trying to teach you.”

A pause. The kid looks down at the floor so intensely that I have to look down there myself. Nothing's there but gray carpet squares.

Then the kid looks at me. He speaks.

“I get you, man,” he says.

“Good.” A pause. “Now go home. You've got a home?”

“I got a home. I got a grandma.”

“Then go.”

“What the fu—?”

“Just go.”

He runs to the door.

The young officer looks at me. Then he says, “That's just great. They send a detective to the scene. And he lets the suspect go.”

I don't smile. I don't answer. I walk to a nearby table where beautiful silk ties and pocket squares are laid out in groups according to color. I focus on the yellow section—yellow with blue stripes, yellow with tiny red dots, yellow paisley, yellow…

My cell phone pings. The message on the screen is big and bold and simple. CD. Cop Down.

No details. Just an address: 655 Park Avenue. Right now.

Cops and lights and
miles of yellow tape:
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
.

Sirens and detectives crowd the blocks between 65th and 67th Streets. Even the mayor's car (license
NYC 1
) is here.

People from the neighborhood, doormen on break, and students from Hunter College try to catch a glimpse of the scene. Hundreds of people stand on the blocked-off avenue. It's a tragedy and a block party at the same time.

Detective Gabriel Ruggie approaches me. There will be no French-guy jokes, no late-guy jokes, no Pretty Boy jokes. This is serious shit. Ruggie talks.

“Elliott is up there now. The scene is at the seventh floor front. He said to send you up right away.”

I walk through the fancy lobby. It's loaded with cops and reporters and detectives. I hear a brief litany of somber “hellos” and “hiyas,” most of them followed by various mispronunciations of my name.

Luke. Look. Luck.

Who the hell cares now? This is Cop Down.

Detective Christine Liang is running the elevator along with a plainclothes officer.

“Hey, Moncrief. Let me take you up,” Liang says. “The inspector's been asking where you are.”

What the hell is the deal? Ten minutes ago I'm supervising New York's dumbest little crime of the day. Now, all of a sudden, the most serious type of crime—officer homicide—requires my attention.

“Good—you're here,” Elliott says as I step from the elevator. I feel as if he's been waiting for me. It's the typical chaos of a homicide, with fingerprinting people, computer people, the coroner's people—all the people who are really smart, really thorough; but honestly, none of them ever seem to come up with information that helps solve the case.

I'm scared. I don't mind saying it. Elliott hits his phone and says, “Moncrief is here now.”

“Who's that?” I ask.

“Just headquarters. I let them know you were here. They were trying to track you down.”

“But you knew where I was. You sent me there,” I say, confused.

“Yeah, I know. I know.” Elliott seems confused, too.

“What's the deal?” I ask.

“Come with me,” Elliott says. The crowd of NYPD people parts for us as if we're celebrities. We walk down a wide hall with black and white marble squares on the floor, two real Warhols on the walls. Suddenly I have a flash of an apartment in Paris—the high ceilings, the carved cornices. But in a moment I've traveled back from boulevard Haussmann to Park Avenue.

At the end of the hallway, an officer stands in front of an open door. Bright lights—floodlights, examination lights—pour from the room into the hallway. The officer moves aside immediately as Elliott and I approach.

Three people are huddled in a group near a window. I catch sight of a body, a woman. Elliott and I walk toward the group. We are still a few feet away when I see her. When my heart leaps up.

Maria Martinez.

A black plastic sheet covers her torso. Her head, blood speckling and staining her hair, is exposed.

Elliott puts a hand on my shoulder. I don't yell or cry or shake. A numbness shoots through me, and then the words tumble out.

“How? How?”

“I told you this morning, she was on loan to Vice. They had her playing the part of a high-class call girl. It seems that…well, whoever she was supposed to meet decided to…well, take a knife to her stomach.”

I say nothing. I keep staring at my dead partner. Elliott decides to fill the air with words. I know he means well.

“The owners of this place are at their house in Nantucket. No servants were home…no…”

I've stopped listening. Elliott stops talking. The police photographers keep clicking away. Phil Namanworth, the coroner, is typing furiously on his laptop. Cops and detectives come and go.

Maria is dead. She looks so peaceful. Isn't that what people always say? But it's true. At least in this case it's true. In death there is peace, but there's no peace for those of us left behind.

Elliott looks me straight in the eye.

“Ya know, Moncrief, I'd like to say that in time you'll get over this.” He pauses. “But I'd be a liar.”

“And a good cop never lies,” I say softly.

“Come back to the precinct in my car,” Elliott says.

“No, thank you,” I answer. “There's someplace I've got to be.”