NYPD Red 4 (4 page)

“Do I look like I need therapy?” I asked.

“Who said anything about therapy?” she asked, all wide-eyed and innocent. “All I know is that Cheryl moved in with you three weeks ago, last night you didn’t get home till God knows when, and then you showed up this morning looking more stressed out than a virgin at a lumberjacks’ convention. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say that your troubled mind is more troubled than usual. If therapy would help, then you’ve come to the right diner.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” I said.

“Sounds like I struck a nerve. I’ll be right back.”

She returned with my breakfast, topped off my coffee, and sat down. “You do this all the time,” she said. “You show up with that needy-guy look on your face, I offer to help, and you play hard to get. Either tell me what’s going on, or I’ll find someone else who appreciates what a woman with my life experience brings to the table.”

I told her.

She shrugged. “So you’re busy. It goes with the territory. Cheryl’s not going to move out because you’re on a high-profile case and have to work late.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I said. “I know too many cops whose relationships imploded because they put the job first.”

“Your job isn’t the problem, Zach.”

“Then what is?”

She picked up the sugar packet dispenser and dumped it on the table.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It’s the diner version of a PowerPoint presentation.”

She picked up a pink packet of Sweet’N Low and a blue packet of Equal. “The blue is you, and the pink is Cheryl,” she said. “And here you are, together at home.” She put both packets back into the empty dispenser.

“Over here is work,” she said, picking up a saltshaker and putting it on the other side of the table.

“Now, every day, you go to the salt mines,” she said, moving the Zach packet from home to work, “where you are joined by a lot of your fellow men in blue.” She surrounded the saltshaker with Equal packets.

“And your ex-girlfriend Kylie.” She added a single pink packet to the blue pile. “Then you and Kylie go off and spend the next ten to fourteen hours together.” She moved the Sweet’N Low and an Equal to a vacant spot on the table.

“So,” she said, “do you still think it’s about working overtime, or are you apologizing to Cheryl for spending those late nights with Kylie?”

“I hope you’re not charging me for this,” I said, “because your entire analysis is based on old news. I’ve moved on. Kylie is the past. Cheryl is the future. The Zach Jordan soap opera is over.”

“I’m sure you believe that, but you forgot one thing. When you moved in, you and Cheryl went from dating to cohabitating. You’re living with her now, and I’ll bet that every night you’re out late playing cops and robbers with your past, you’re haunted by the fact that your future is all alone in the love nest waiting for you to come home.”

She handed me the dispenser with the solo pink Sweet’N Low packet in it. “Mull it over,” she said.

Before I could respond, my phone vibrated and a text popped up. It was from Captain Cates.

Gracie Mansion. Now.

“Gerri, I’ve got to go,” I said, standing up.

“Wait a minute,” she said, pointing at the packets of artificial sweetener scattered all over the table. “Are you going to just leave this mess here?”

“Since when is that my job?” I said.

A victory smile spread across her face. “It’s all part of the therapy, Zach. It’s your life. You clean it up.”

MURIEL SYKES HAD
been mayor of New York for only three months, but Kylie and I were already on her speed dial. We had done her a real solid when she was a candidate, and as good fortune would have it, the new mayor believed in reciprocity.

The brass at Red, who knew the benefits of being in bed with the politicians in power, loved the fact that one of their teams had become the mayor’s go-to cops. So when Cates’s text came telling us to go to Gracie Mansion, we didn’t waste time prioritizing. Mayor Sykes
was
our priority.

Kylie was waiting for me outside the One Nine.

“Do you know what the mayor wants?” I asked as soon as I got in the car.

“No,” Kylie said. “I was in the office when Cates got the call. There were no specifics. She just told me to roll.”

“Did you fill Cates in on where we are on the Elena Travers case?”

“It’s more like I filled her in on where we aren’t. We got nothing. All I could tell Cates is that these guys weren’t high-end jewel thieves. They’re a couple of mooks who are in over their heads and will try to unload the necklace fast. I told her we put the word out on the street, and we’re hoping to get a hit from our extensive CI network.”

“Extensive? We’ve got a call in to three CIs. She didn’t buy that bullshit, did she?”

“Of course not. But it did get a laugh.”

Two minutes later, we arrived at Gracie and let the guard at the gate know we were there to see Mayor Sykes.

“You better hurry,” he said. “She’s going to be wheels up in less than a minute.”

The mayor’s black SUV was parked in front of the mansion. I recognized her driver.

“Charlie, what’s going on? We just got a call that the mayor wanted to see us.”

“And she just got a call that the governor wanted to see her. We all have to dance for someone, Zach.”

Kylie and I walked up the porch steps just as the front door flew open, and Muriel Sykes stormed out. She was wearing a warm purple coat and a cold, hard scowl.

“Good morning, Madam Mayor,” I said.

“America’s sweetheart was murdered in my city on my watch. What the hell is good about it?” she said. “Where are you on the case?”

“We’ve got nothing of substance to report yet,” I said.

“
Nothing of substance
seems to be the theme of my day,” she said. “I’m on my way to Albany to be lied to.”

She walked down the porch steps and headed for the SUV. Charlie opened the rear door as she approached.

Kylie and I followed. “Mayor Sykes,” I said, “you sent for us. Was it just to get an update on the Travers case?”

“Hell, no. I knew you had nothing because nobody from Red called to say you had something.”

She climbed into the backseat of the car, and Charlie closed the door. Sykes rolled down the rear window. “I called for something else. It’s a nasty can of worms, and I can’t trust anyone to deal with it but you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Do you have time to give us the details?”

“Detective, I don’t have time to wind my watch. Howard can give you the details. He’s waiting for you inside.”

She rolled up the window, and the SUV took off for the 145-mile trip to the state capital.

“I’ve never seen her in such a foul mood,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to be Charlie.”

“Hell,” Kylie said, “if this is the real Muriel Sykes, then I wouldn’t want to be Howard.”

That got a laugh out of me. Howard Sykes was the mayor’s husband. We went back up the porch steps to find out what nasty can of worms he was about to entrust us with.

MURIEL SYKES WAS
a scrappy kid from the streets of Brooklyn who worked her way through law school, was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, then crushed a sitting mayor in her first run for office. If she had one defining quality that propelled her along the way, it was grit.

Her husband was neither gritty nor scrappy. A privileged child raised on New York’s affluent Sutton Place, Howard Sykes had navigated his way from the city’s private school system to the Ivy League and ultimately to Madison Avenue, where his white-bread good looks and well-bred patrician manner made him a natural fit in a world where image was often more valued than substance.

But there was a lot more to the man than a proper golf swing and a gift for captivating his dinner guests with advertising war stories. Howard was a virtuoso at orchestrating marketing campaigns that won the hearts of consumers and sweetened the bottom lines of his clients. He retired at the age of sixty to manage his wife’s political campaign and was credited with being the force behind making her the first female mayor of New York City.

And to top it all off, he was a hell of a nice guy. Kylie and I had met him at several charity functions, and he had a way of always making us feel as important as any billionaire in the room.

He was waiting for us in the living room of the First Family’s private residence. “Zach, Kylie, thanks for coming,” he said, ignoring the fact that it was a command performance.

“How can we help?” I asked.

“I’m on the board of trustees of two hospitals here in the city,” he said. “A month ago some medical equipment disappeared from Saint Cecilia’s.”

“What kind of equipment?”

Ever the consummate adman, Howard had prepared visual aids. He opened up a folder and pulled out a photo of a contraption that looked like an iPad on steroids.

“That’s a portable ultrasound machine used for cardiac imaging. It weighs ten pounds, which means the tech can walk it to any bedside in the hospital.”

“But this one walked out of the hospital,” I said.

“This and two more just like it. They cost twenty thousand a pop. My first thought was that that’s the downside to making these machines so compact: they’re easy to steal. However”—he pulled out the next picture—“this one disappeared about the same time.”

It looked like R2-D2’s taller brother.

“It’s an anesthesia machine. Fifty thousand dollars, and at four hundred pounds, you can’t exactly slip it into a backpack. And yes, it has wheels, but it also has an electromagnetic security device embedded in it, and the hospital has guards at all access points. But it still went out the door.”

“Did Saint Cecilia report the thefts?” Kylie asked.

“No. We had no proof that anything was
stolen
, and we didn’t report them missing. The hospital decided to write it off and chalk it up to bad security.”

Kylie and I said nothing. Because so far nothing made sense. A low-level crime that the victim didn’t report, and yet the mayor, knowing we were caught up in the Elena Travers murder, asked us to drop everything and get involved.

Howard finally dropped the other shoe.

“I’m also on the board at Mercy Hospital, and two days ago it was hit. This time they got away with a hundred and seventy thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. I don’t believe in coincidences, so I did some digging, and I found out that nine hospitals had been robbed in two months. Total haul, close to two million dollars.” He handed me a printout. “The specifics are all here.”

“And you’d like us to find out who’s behind the thefts,” I said.

“Yes, but not in your usual style.”

“I didn’t know we had a style,” Kylie said, looking at me. “He’s going to have to tell us what it is so we don’t keep doing it.”

Howard smiled and pulled a newspaper clipping from the folder. It was a picture of Kylie and me leaving the Bassett brothers’ house.

“The media loves you,” he said. “It’s one thing to be on the front page when you solve a major crime, but last night you interviewed the people whose necklace was stolen, and you made page five of the
Post.
You guys get ink wherever you go, and my goal—and Muriel’s—is to keep a tight lid on this investigation. She called the PC this morning, and he’s on board.”

“This is a pervasive crime spree, but it’s the first time we’ve ever heard of it,” Kylie said. “Why is it so hush-hush? And why not tell the public what’s going on? Sometimes they can be our best source of leads.”

“If you ask the head of any one of these hospitals, he’ll tell you that the secrecy is for the well-being of the patients. People want to feel safe when they check in, but if they hear that criminals have stolen a piece of equipment the size of a refrigerator, they’re going to worry.
What else can these villains take? My wallet? My laptop? My newborn baby?
The prevailing wisdom at the hospitals is that it’s better to keep it quiet. Less stress for the patients.”

“What’s the real reason they don’t want to go public with the thefts?” I asked.

“Because if this shit gets out,” Howard said, a wide grin on his face, “it would put a serious crimp in their fund-raising.”

“CHANGE OUR STYLE?”
Kylie said as soon as she pulled the car out of the mayor’s driveway. “Is he serious? One of the reasons we get press is because we solve crimes. Riddle me this, Batman: how are we supposed to crack this case if we can’t put out any feelers to the public?”

“Because we can solve anything, Girl Wonder. That’s why the mayor of Gotham City picked us,” I said. “Why don’t we start by talking to the people we’re actually allowed to talk to? Get on the Drive, and let’s shoot down to Mercy Hospital and talk to their security people.”

She turned left on 79th, and we headed south on the FDR.

“There’s only one way to get two million dollars’ worth of hospital equipment from New York to whatever third world buyer is willing to pay for it,” Kylie said. “Big fat shipping containers.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Let’s give Howard’s list to Jan Hogle and see if she can run it against the manifests of cargo ships that sailed within a few days of each heist. She can cross-check by weight. If they stole
x
pounds of equipment, she can flag every shipment that weighs about the same.”

“That wasn’t my idea,” Kylie said. “I was thinking we could go down to the shipyards and talk to the dockworkers. Those guys have eyes and ears everywhere, and a few of them owe us.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “And then our pictures would be in the paper as the first two cops fired by the Sykes administration.”

Kylie’s cell phone rang. We were doing fifty on the Drive, so she tapped a button and the call went directly to speaker.

“This is Detective MacDonald,” she said.