NYPD Red 4 (12 page)

“Go next door
and take a nap,” Annie instructed her son after they'd finished their tea and cookies.

“Aw, Ma,” Teddy whined. “That place stinks like cat. Why can't I just stay here?”

“Because this place stinks like cop. There were two detectives here this morning. What do I do if they come banging on my door with a warrant? Tell them to come back in five minutes so I can tidy up?”

“Fine,” Teddy said, sulking. “What are you going to do?”

“I've got a date,” she said, her eyes smiling. “Now get out of here while I make myself as beautiful as I possibly can, considering what I've got to work with.”

She opened the door, scouted the hallway, gave Teddy the high sign, and he scurried to the adjacent apartment in seconds.

Then she went to the bedroom, opened the closet, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She frowned. “Needs work,” she said.

So she got to work. Makeup first, hair next, and then she slipped into a seldom-worn but totally chic Carolina Herrera black cocktail dress. A pair of sensible heels, two dabs of perfume, and finally, her hands a little shaky, she put the emerald and diamond necklace around her neck.

She went back to the closet door for a second look. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she said. “Who looks like eight million bucks now?”

She walked to the living room and stood in front of her late husband. “What do you think, Buddy?” she said, doing a full twirl. “It normally costs three thousand, but you know what a smart shopper I am. I got it for a steal at Bergdorf's.”

She laughed out loud, and she could practically hear him laughing with her. She took the urn from the sideboard, set it on the kitchen table, and sat down across from it.

“I'm in over my head, Buddy,” she said. “I could use some advice.”

She placed a hand on either side of the urn and closed her eyes.

“The newspaper says this little bauble is worth eight mil, but I don't know beans about fencing jewelry. What do you think this Jeremy guy can get for it? Forty cents on the dollar?”

Buddy didn't respond.

“Thirty cents? Twenty-five?”

Her palms warmed when she got to fifteen. They tingled when she got to twelve.

“So if he's getting a million out of the deal, what should my cut be?”

She ran through some numbers again until the two of them zeroed in on 17½ percent.

Then they talked. Mostly about Teddy, because he was always their biggest issue, and finally she apologized for not keeping her promise. Buddy had asked her to spread his ashes up and down the Strip in Vegas, and Annie had agreed. She just hadn't said when.

“There'll be plenty of time for Teddy to spread us both. In the meantime, I need you around.”

She sat there for ten more minutes, the urn cradled in her hands, until the phone rang. She put it on speaker so Buddy could hear.

“Mrs. Ryder. It's Jeremy. Look, I'm sorry. We got off on the wrong foot. Can we talk?”

“You can talk,” Annie said. “I can listen.”

“I originally hired Teddy and Raymond for fifty thousand. Then I upped it to ninety. I'll give you one and a quarter.”

“One seventy-five,” Annie said. “Take it or—”

“I'll take it,” Jeremy said. “But I need time to pull the money together. How about if I come over tomorrow around noon?”

“Good idea. Bring some chloroform and an empty trunk. What am I, stupid? This either goes down in a public place or it doesn't go down at all.”

“Okay, okay. What about Central Park?”

“Jeremy, old ladies
without
any jewelry get mugged in Central Park. Meet me at 205 East Houston Street at noon.”

He repeated the address. “What's there?” he asked.

“Your necklace,” she said, hanging up.

She removed it from around her neck, wrapped it in an empty plastic bag from CVS, took the top off the urn, and dropped the bag inside.

“Keep an eye on this for me, Buddy,” she said. “You're the only one I trust.”

“It looked like
you connected with Cheryl after our meeting with Cates,” Kylie said, navigating the car through the usual Third Avenue rush hour logjam. We were on our way to talk to Howard Sykes at Gracie Mansion. “Did you two lovebirds finally cement the relationship?”

“
Connected
would be an overstatement,” I said. “We had a brief encounter, like two ships in the night, only we were two cops on a stairwell.
Cement
is an even bigger stretch. Right now, our relationship is being held together by static cling. As for
lovebirds
…”

“I get it, I get it,” Kylie said, hanging a right on 88th Street. “I'm sorry I asked.”

“Don't apologize. I'm happy to have someone to dump it on. You were right this morning about me licking my wounds. By the time I got home last night, I was relegated to the sofa, and I didn't get to see Cheryl till this afternoon. And you can't do what I have to do in a house full of nosy cops, so I'm going to try to make reparations tonight over dinner at Paola's.”

“And are you telling me all this because you think I'm hooked on the soap opera you call your love life? Or is it your not-so-subtle way of telling me not to call you tonight because you're busy doing damage control?”

“What do you think, Detective?” I said.

“My finely tuned detective instincts tell me that if you're wining and dining Cheryl at Paola's, she definitely won't break up with you
before
dinner.”

We crossed East End Avenue, pulled into the mayor's driveway, and ID'd ourselves at the guardhouse. An aide escorted us into Howard's study. I cut straight to the chase.

“Sir,” I said, “we have thirty-five thousand cops at our disposal. That's more than enough manpower to station a unit at every single hospital in the five boroughs and wait for this gang to strike again. But…” I let it hang there.

“But,” he said, filling in the blank, “you can't mobilize that many people and still expect to keep a crime wave of this magnitude under wraps.”

“Exactly.”

“I've worked with you two long enough to know you didn't come here to ask me to take the lid off this operation,” he said. “You have a plan, don't you?”

“Actually,” Kylie said, “our department shrink, Dr. Cheryl Robinson, came up with it. Zach and I like it, but we can't pull it off without a lot of help from you.”

“What can I do?”

“We need you to help us set up the next robbery.”

“You…you want me to help you rob a hospital?”

“No, sir. We want you to help
them
rob a hospital, but we'll be there waiting for them.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Maybe I watch too many crime shows on TV, but I thought I'd tell you detectives the problem, you'd dig up some clues, and then you'd track these bastards down.”

“These bastards don't leave a lot of clues,” I said.

“And which of our city's fine medical institutions have you selected to be the designated victim?”

“If you can convince them,” I said, “Hudson Hospital.”

“How'd they get so lucky?”

“Two reasons. First, there's the safety factor. These thugs are well armed. So far they haven't used their guns, but if they walk into a trap and they're faced with a SWAT team, they may not give up without a fight. Hudson is in the middle of a renovation, and we can contain the operation to the two floors where there are no patients or staff.”

“And the other reason?”

“We think Hudson has something they want,” Kylie said.

“They've stolen anything and everything,” Howard said. “Their philosophy seems to be, if it's not nailed down, take it. How could you possibly know what they want?”

“Dr. Robinson did an analysis, and they're being much more selective than we originally thought. They've never stolen the same equipment twice.”

He shrugged. “So? Stealing is stealing.”

“There are nuances,” Kylie said. “If somebody breaks into a department store and steals a rack of fifty fur coats, odds are those coats are going to wind up on the black market. But what if he breaks into the same store and takes two coats, six dresses, a few pantsuits, five pair of shoes—”

“It sounds like he's shopping for his wife,” Howard said.

“Exactly. These guys are taking two of these, three of those, one of this. Dr. Robinson's theory is that they are slowly collecting inventory for a single medical facility.”

“Jesus,” he said. “You think they're stocking their own hospital?”

“Yes, but they still don't have everything they need.”

“What do you think they'll be shopping for?”

“Dr. Robinson calculated that based on the medical needs of a large percentage of the population, and based on the prohibitive cost of the diagnostic equipment, they would be very tempted to go after a state-of-the-art mobile mammogram machine,” Kylie said.

“And Hudson Hospital just bought two of them,” I said.

“I know their CEO, Phil Landsberg,” Howard said.

“And we know their head of security, Frank Cavallaro,” I said.

Howard Sykes sat back in his chair and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. He closed his eyes for at least fifteen seconds and finally looked up. “Do you think you can actually pull this off?”

“Not without you on board,” I said. “What do
you
think, sir? Can you help us?”

“What do I think? I think it's nuts. Totally, certifiably crazy,” he said. “But I'll call Phil Landsberg in the morning and see if I can convince him to join us in our insanity.”

Jeremy Nevins, wearing
nothing but a pair of black bikini briefs, padded across the room and explored the contents of the hotel minibar. “Do you believe the prices on this shit?” he said. “A jar of macadamia nuts and a bottle of Heineken cost more than my first car.”

Leo Bassett, lying naked under the sheets, laughed and stared at the sinewy, sculpted, perfect thirty-two-year-old body standing only ten feet away.

Spending Wednesday nights in the penthouse suite at Morgans with Jeremy had become a tradition, their private little escape from the rest of the world. And with Elena's death, the robbery gone bad, and Max's craziness about selling the company name, Leo had more to escape from than usual.

“What are you thinking?” Jeremy said, popping the cap on the beer.

“How much I love you, and how much I hate Max.”

“I love you too. And Max isn't so bad.”

“He's insane. He wants to sell our soul to the devil. He's going to turn the Bassett brand into McDonald's.”

“That would be terrible,” Jeremy said. He took a macadamia nut out of the jar and seductively set it onto his tongue before easing it into his mouth. “And think of the fallout. You'd make jillions of dollars. Maybe zillions. I don't know. I'm not good at math.”

“I don't care how much I can make. The name Bassett stands for the ultimate in luxury. When I introduce myself, I can see the look in people's eyes. It's as if I said my name is Tiffany or Bulgari. Do you have any idea how good that makes me feel?”

Jeremy gave him a boyish pout. “I thought making you feel good was my job,” he said, setting down the beer and striking a pose.

Leo squirmed under the sheets. “Yes, it is, and you're late for work.”

Jeremy tucked two fingers into his briefs' elastic waistband, licked his lips, and slowly, tantalizingly, lowered the front of the briefs.

Leo's eyes were wide, and his breathing was shallow.

They all love a good show,
Jeremy thought,
and Leo is a better audience than most.

“But first,” Jeremy said, letting the waistband snap back into place, “we have some business to attend to. I found the necklace.”

Leo sat up. “Are you serious? Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“I was waiting for you to be in a receptive mood, and from where I'm standing, you look pretty damn receptive.”

“Who has it?”

“The same guy who ran off with it last night—Teddy Ryder. Only he gave it to his mother, and let me tell you, Leo, this broad looks like that little old lady from
The Golden Girls,
but boy, can she play hardball. She negotiates like the head of the Teamsters union.”

“How much does she want?”

“A hundred and seventy-five K.”

Leo shrugged. “It's more than we've paid in the past, but it's still a drop in the bucket. We'll collect the eight million from the insurance company, and even though Max has to cut the big stones down, they'll still be worth five, six mil.”

“That's what I thought you'd say, so I told her we had a deal. I have the ninety you gave me. I just need another eighty-five thousand in cash before noon tomorrow.”

“No problem,” Leo said. “Just don't run away with it.”

“Don't worry, sweetheart. Even though you claim not to care about becoming a zillionaire, I promise I won't run away with your money.”

He was being honest. Annie Ryder would wind up with the hundred and seventy-five thousand. All Jeremy wanted was the necklace. He didn't need Max to recut the stones. He had a diamond cutter lined up in Belgium and was booked on a KLM flight to Brussels tomorrow night.

“What do you think?” Jeremy said. “Enough business for one night?”

“More than enough.”

Jeremy picked up the remote to the stereo, turned up the music, and spent the next five minutes artfully shedding a few ounces of nylon and spandex. When the dance was over, he stood in the middle of the room, gloriously naked and heart-stoppingly desirable.

Leo pulled back the sheets. “Come to Papa, baby.”

Jeremy crawled into bed, and the fat, pasty man pulled him close, shoved a thick tongue into his mouth, and reached down between his legs.

Jeremy moaned convincingly. It was all in a day's work.