NYPD Red 4 (5 page)

Until last night,
the most expensive thing in Teddy Ryder's tiny two-room apartment on the Lower East Side was a JVC TV he bought for two hundred bucks on Overstock.com. It was now outshined by the emerald and diamond necklace sitting on his coffee table.

Teddy hadn't slept since the robbery. The guns had just been there to make a point. Nobody was supposed to get killed. His partner, Raymond Davis, had pulled the trigger, but he swore up and down that it wasn't his fault. He blamed it all on the guy in the back of the limo who had grabbed for the gun. Then Raymond had stretched out on the bed and slept like a brick till seven that morning.

Now Raymond was out trying to renegotiate the deal with Jeremy.

“Fifty thousand is bullshit,” Raymond had said once they'd watched the news and found out the necklace was worth eight million. “We're upping the price to half a mil.”

It was late afternoon by the time Raymond finally got back from his meeting with Jeremy. One look at his face, and Teddy could tell that the negotiations had gone down the toilet.

“Jeremy is an asshole,” Raymond said.

“How much did you get?” Teddy asked.

“More than the original deal, but less than I was hoping for.”

“How much?”

“Ninety thou.”

“Apiece?”

“No. Ninety for the whole enchilada.”

“Is he crazy?” Teddy said. “We're not asking for cigarette and beer money. We need enough so we can disappear.”

“Don't you think I said that already?”

“Well, then go back and tell him we know how much the necklace is worth, and if he doesn't give us fair market value, we'll find a buyer who will.”

“Yeah, I said that too. He laughed in my face. Told me the dead actress makes it too hot to handle.” Raymond took the necklace from the coffee table and held it up to the light. “He's right. I asked around. Nobody will touch it.”

Teddy could taste the panic welling up in his throat. His heart was racing, and he wanted to scream
“The dead actress was your fault,”
but he was having too much trouble breathing to waste his breath on Raymond.

He lowered his body to the armchair he'd salvaged from a curb after he'd done his last stretch at Rikers. “So now what do we do?” he asked.

“I've got it all worked out,” Raymond said. “Jeremy is coming over tonight. We pack up, give him the necklace, and leave for Mexico as soon as we get the money.”

“I'm not going anywhere till I say good-bye to my mom,” Teddy said. “As soon as I get my share, I'm going to go over to her place, spend the night, and ask her to make me a stack of cottage cheese pancakes for breakfast.”

“And how much will that cost you, Teddy boy? Five grand? Ten? How big a chunk will you be giving Mommy?”

“What I give her is none of your business.”

“It's my business if we go to Mexico, and I've got forty-five thousand dollars, and all you've got is a belly full of cottage cheese pancakes. I'm not supporting you, Teddy. Or your mother.”

“Don't worry about me,” Teddy said. “What time did Jeremy say he'd be here?”

Raymond shrugged. “He didn't give me a time. He just said tonight. Wake me when he gets here. I'm going to take a nap.”

I was at
my computer when a message from Kylie popped up on the screen.

Kylie loves to be right. She loves it even more when I'm wrong.

Her
office
is the desk directly behind mine. I swiveled my chair. “It sounds like you have something to gloat about,” I said.

“Me?” she asked, gloating. “I just thought you'd want to hear the latest on the hospital robberies. I did a little research, and it seems your favorite risotto lady volunteered at four of the nine hospitals that were robbed.”

“Does she have a rap sheet?”

“She's clean as a whistle. In fact, three of the volunteer coordinators I spoke to said she was one of the best they've ever worked with, and they wished they had a dozen more like her.”

I waited for the
but.

“But,”
she said, “I did find something interesting. Her father was a petroleum engineer. As a kid she moved around the Middle East. After college, she went to India for three years and worked for a charity that provided medical treatment for street children.”

“And that's interesting because…?”

“You heard what Gregg Hutchings said. Where do you think all this high-tech equipment is going to wind up? Lyon is a do-gooder, and she spent years surrounded by third world deprivation. My guess is she's not even getting paid. She's not only doing volunteer work for the hospitals; she's doing volunteer work for the people who are ripping them off.”

“That's brilliant police work, Detective MacDonald. The woman has no criminal record, but she's seen poverty, so she's decided to do her part for the underprivileged by helping a bunch of black marketeers traffic stolen goods,” I said. “Why don't you run that by Mick Wilson at the DA's office and see how long it takes him to kick you out on your ass?”

“That's not the apology I was hoping for,” she said.

“So she worked in four of the hospitals. If I were a lawyer, I'd call it more circumstantial evidence. But as a cop, I'm willing to admit there's more to like about Ms. Lyon than her porcini-asparagus risotto.”

“Are you willing to go back and bring her in for some serious questions?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'd rather let her think we've lost interest, then put a tail on her and see if she can lead us to someone higher up the food chain.”

“That's the first intelligent thing you've said since you were suckered in by that teary-eyed Martha Stewart act. There's hope for you yet, Jordan.”

My cell rang, and I picked it up. It was Cheryl.

“Hey, what are you doing tonight?” she asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

“How do you feel about Italian food?”

“Fantastico.”

“Can you be home by seven?”

“You bet,” I said.

“Great. Love you.”

“Love you back.”

I hung up the phone and let what I'd just heard wash over me. My brain was thinking about the night ahead when Kylie violated my reverie.

“Zach, did you hear what I said?”

“Sorry. Run it by me again.”

“I said we can't tail Lyon. I know the mayor wants us on these hospital robberies, but they're sucking up time we need for the Travers homicide. Let's talk to Cates and see if she can drum us up another team to do the legwork.”

“Sure.”

She got up from her desk and headed toward Cates's office. My body followed, but my head was still wrapped up in the phone call from Cheryl.

It was the first time I'd ever heard her refer to my apartment as
home.
It felt incredible.

Captain Delia Cates
is third-generation NYPD. She grew up in Harlem, and if you ask her where she went to college, she'll smile and say, “Oh, there was a good school a mile from my house.” The school, as those of us in the know can tell you, is Columbia University.

She graduated at eighteen, got a master's in criminal justice from John Jay College, and did four years in the marine corps before joining the department. She rose through the ranks like a comet, and when our previous mayor created NYPD Red, his consigliere, Irwin Diamond, tapped Cates to run it.

“It's not that I was the best cop for the job,” Cates told me one night when we were having a drink. “But when most of your constituency is overprivileged white men, it's smart politics to put a black woman in charge.”

The truth is, she
was
the best cop for the job, and most days I love having her as my boss. This day was not one of them.

“That's all you've got?” she said when Kylie and I told her where we were on the Travers murder. “You two haven't done squat since you met with the Bassett brothers last night.”

“We've got cops canvassing the area, looking for eyewitnesses,” Kylie said. “And there are at least twenty-five traffic and private security cameras at 54th and Broadway, where the shooting happened. We have Jan Hogle going through those.”

“And how about that
extensive
network of CIs you told me about this morning?” Cates said. “How's that working out?”

“You're right, Captain,” I said before Kylie could mount a defense. “We haven't done squat on the Travers case. No excuse.”

Cates laughed. “Of course you have an excuse. It's called politics over police work. The mayor and her husband want you on these hospital robberies. You're stuck with it. But I can't take you off this homicide. Which means you have to do both.”

“We can,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, “but we could use some help. We have a person of interest—a hospital volunteer who may have been the inside person on four of the nine jobs. She may lead us to bigger fish, but we need to tail her. Do you think you can snag us another team to throw against it?”

“I'd be happy to,” Cates said. “Do you think you can snag me the perps who killed Elena Travers?”

“We'd be happy to,” Kylie said.

Cates ignored the wisecrack and looked at me. “You've got Betancourt and Torres,” she said, waving us out of her office without another word.

Five minutes later, we were sitting down to brief our backup.

Before they came to Red, Detectives Jenny Betancourt and Wanda Torres had more collars than any team in Brooklyn South. Betancourt is a pit bull when it comes to details, and Torres—well, she's just a pit bull. Kylie and I had worked with them before, and we liked them—partly because they were new and eager to make their bones, and partly because they reminded us of us. They bickered constantly, like an old married couple.

“I agree with Kylie,” Betancourt said after we briefed them. “Lyon spent her formative years watching a lot of people die because of substandard medical care. That's enough to give her a motive.”

“Bullshit,” Torres said. “I spent my
formative years
in the South Bronx. Five kids in my grade school died of asthma.
Asthma,
for God's sake. How's that for shoddy medical care? People who grow up in poverty steal steaks from the supermarket, TV sets, maybe—not medical equipment.”

I told them to hash it out on their own, reminded them how critical the case was to the mayor's husband, and turned them loose.

“What are your plans for the night?” Kylie asked me as soon as Betancourt and Torres left.

“Cheryl and I are going out for Italian food,” I said. “How about you?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “It's been a long day. I think I'll go home, take a bubble bath, order up some dinner, open up a bottle of wine, and watch anything with Mark Wahlberg in it.”

“Sounds like a restful night,” I said.

“That's my plan,” she said. “Rest up.”

She was lying through her teeth. I had no idea what her plan was, but I knew one thing for sure: a bubble bath, a bottle of wine, and a Mark Wahlberg movie had nothing to do with it.

I got home
at 6:52, eight minutes under the deadline. Cheryl was in the kitchen, spreading a pungent buttery mix on both sides of a split loaf of ciabatta.

“What's going on?” I said.

“I'm making garlic bread.”

“My keen detective instincts picked up on that,” I said. “But I thought we were going out to dinner.”

“Who said anything about going out? I asked you how you felt about Italian food. You said
‘Fantastico,'
so that's what I'm making. There's a lasagna in the oven. It'll be ready about seven thirty.”

“This is amazing,” I said.

“It's not amazing,” she said. “It's called dinner. Normal couples do it every night.”

I came around behind her, cupped her breasts in my hands, and let my lips and tongue nibble the back of her neck. “And what do normal couples do if they have thirty-five minutes to kill before their lasagna is ready?”

“Keep your pants on, Detective Horndog,” she said, wriggling away. “At least until after dinner. For now, why don't you open a bottle of wine and turn on the TV? It doesn't get any more normal than that.”

I put my badge, my gun, and my cell phone down on the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the dining area, pulled a bottle of Gabbiano Chianti from the wine rack, and poured two glasses.

I found the TV remote, flipped on
Jeopardy!,
and sat down on the sofa. Five minutes later, Cheryl joined me, and the two of us spent the next half hour vying to see who was the fastest at coming up with the right answer. It was a lopsided contest. She trounced me.

It was pure, unadulterated domestic boredom, and I loved it.

“Loser does the dishes,” she said, heading back to the kitchen.

I turned off the TV and went to the bathroom to wash up. I was looking in the mirror when my eye caught the pink bathrobe hanging next to my white one on the back of the door. Cheryl was not the first woman I had lived with. But this was the first time in my life that I wasn't having second thoughts.

By the time I got back, the overhead lights in the dining area were dimmed, two flickering candles lit the room, and dinner was on the table: a steaming pan of lasagna, a salad bowl filled with greens and cherry tomatoes, and a basket of garlic bread.

“Are you sure this is normal?” I said. “Because it looks pretty
fantastico
to me.”

Cheryl was standing next to the breakfast bar. “Don't sit down,” she said. She had my cell phone in her hand. “It rang while you were in the bathroom.”

“Whoever it is, tell them I'm eating dinner. I'll call back.”

“It's your partner,” Cheryl said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. “She needs a cop.”

I took the phone. “Kylie, unless someone has a gun to your head, it'll have to wait.”

“Zach, I'm at a gas station up in Harlem.”

“Doing what?”

“I tracked down one of Spence's dealers.”

“Why? After everything the counselors at the rehab told you, why the hell would you—never mind, I know why you do the crazy shit you do. What I don't know is why you'd go up there on your own without any backup.”

“Because I thought I could handle it on my own.”

“But you can't.” I looked at Cheryl and mouthed the words “I'm sorry.” I turned back to the phone. “Okay, just tell me what's going on.”

“The dealer's name is Baby D. I confronted him and told him I was looking for my husband. He said he hasn't seen Spence in months, but he's lying. I know because he's wearing Spence's new watch.”

“You can't bust him for that, Kylie.”

“For fuck's sake, Jordan!” she yelled. “Are you going to give me a lecture on all the things I
can't
do? I thought you said you'd help. Forget it.”

She hung up.

I stood there, seething.

“What's going on?” Cheryl said.

“Same old, same old. She's in over her head, she's out of control, and she needs help.”

“Did you tell her to call for backup?”

“She can't. It's not police business. It's her own crazy shit. I don't know what I'm going to do,” I said, tilting my head at Cheryl, hoping she'd pick up the baton.

“Don't give me that puppy-dog look,” she said. “You know exactly what you're going to do. You're just hoping I'm the one who tells you to do it. Well, it's not going to happen.”

Of course it wasn't. I pressed the Recent Calls button on my phone and tapped the top one.

Kylie picked up on the first ring. “What?” she demanded.

“I told you this morning that I'd help, and I meant it.”

“Fine. Then get your ass up to the BP station on 129th and Park as fast as you can.”

“Give me twenty minutes,” I said, looking straight at Cheryl. “In the meantime, don't do anything stupid.”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “And, Zach?”

“What?”

“Bring cash.”

I hung up the phone.

Cheryl walked over to the table, blew out the candles, then turned on the lights.

I grabbed my gun and badge from the counter, threw on my jacket, and went out the door.

Neither of us had said a word, which, in hindsight, was probably the smartest thing we could have done.