The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (118 page)

“Shoot.”

“Edward and Bebe Cole.
 
Did you do their posts?”

Skeen was silent for a moment.
 
“That was what?
 
Eight, nine months ago?”

“Seven.”

“I don’t think so,” Carlo said.
 
And then, remembering:
 
“No, I know I didn’t.
 
I was at a conference when they were murdered.
 
Hatlen did them.”

“All right,” Marty said.
 
“Would you mind pulling their files?
 
See if they had the same tattoo?”

“Will do.”

“And thanks, Carlo.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He clicked the phone shut, stepped to the curb and flagged a cab.
 
The driver was straight out of the Third World, with a bright red turban wrapped around his head and a grisly black beard that hugged his pock-marked face in thick dark coils.
 
Marty gave the man his address, repeated it, and hoped he’d get there before nightfall.

He looked out the side window and watched the city skate by.
 
Skeen was right.
 
Though crudely rendered, Wood’s tattoo had been a picture of a bull.
 
What looked like a smudge with points on the top, actually was a bull with horns.
 
The tiny hole had gone clean through its snout.

A Wall Street bull.

Marty leaned back against the seat and thought of Gerald Hayes.
 
There was a time when he had been one of the most prominent men on Wall Street.
 
A time when hedonism and greed had marked an era.
 
Then, the bulls on Wall Street had known no limits.
 
They had stolen and cheated and deceived a nation.
 
So why not push things beyond the boardroom and the DOW and prove themselves elsewhere?
 
Screw hedge funds.
 
Why not hedge your life, take things farther and create the ultimate club, where the price of initiation was a tattoo, a tiny gold hoop and God knows what else?

But the membership wasn’t exclusive to only those who controlled the money on Wall Street—Wood’s involvement proved that—which led Marty to believe that this club was more about power than anything else.
 
And what better symbol of power than a bull?
 

So, who else was involved?
 
Wolfhagen, Lasker and Schwartz?
 
How many people in how many different positions of power?

The cab stopped for a red light and Marty looked out the front window.
 
The crowds at the street corners were beginning to cross.
 
His gaze lingered on the profiles of people he didn’t know while his stomach tightened.
 

This case was bigger than him.
 
The people involved in this club obviously were aware of the murders and the police involvement.
 
They knew their cover was threatened and Marty knew they’d go to any length to protect that cover.
 
This was the kind of case that destroyed careers.
 

This was the kind of case where people murdered to keep others quiet.

*
  
*
  
*

At home, he dropped the mail and Maggie’s novel onto the kitchen table, checked his answering machine and found no messages.
 
He went to the refrigerator, grabbed an apple from the top shelf and wondered about Maggie.
 
With Wood’s security system disabled, she’d been able to walk straight into the woman’s house.

He went to his office, sat at his desk, reached for a pen and a pad of paper, and started to outline the facts as he knew them.

Wood came home yesterday at 5:00 a.m.
 
Hines said she’d been a mess and forgot to reset the alarm.
 
Then, at some point, she went upstairs to her bedroom, overdosed on meth and died in bed between three and four o’clock that afternoon.
 
Theresa Wu had seen Maggie leaving Wood’s home that morning, though she hadn’t given Marty a specific time.
 

Marty took a bite of the apple and chewed.
 
He opened his address book, looked up Helena Adams’ telephone number and called her.
 
It was Theresa Wu who answered.
 
“Theresa, it’s Marty Spellman.
 
Can I ask you a question?”

“If you’re quick.”

“What time did you see Maggie Cain leaving Wood’s home?”

“6:30.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“That’s because, I am.
 
I take my run at that time each morning.
 
If I miss it, like I did today, I run at night.
 
I was leaving when I saw her.”
 

“Did she have a car?”

“She did.
 
She put the box in the trunk and took off.”
 
Wu paused and dropped her voice to a whisper.
 
“What do you suppose was inside that box?”

“I’m trying to figure that out,” Marty said.
 
He thanked her and hung up the phone.

All right.
 
Wood was alive when Maggie made her visit.
 
But why the visit?
 
Was it an interview for the book?
 
Marty dismissed the idea.
 
Wood never would have scheduled one that early.
 
She’d know she’d be coming home high.
 
So Maggie must have come unannounced.
 
But why so early?
 
What was she seeking?
 
Wood with her guard down?

Marty finished the apple, went back to the kitchen, tossed the core into the trash, grabbed a can of Diet Coke from the fridge.
 

Maggie knew about that club.
 
He could feel it.
 
She knew about Wood’s involvement and had gone to her home on that specific day and at that specific time so she could catch her at her worst.
 
She wanted the upper hand.
 
She needed something from Wood and she left with it in that box.

Marty was wondering what it could be when the telephone rang.

He picked it up, expecting Jennifer, but it was Maggie Cain.
 
“I’m being followed,” were her first words to him.

There was fear in her voice, an edge of panic.

“Where are you?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.
 
“This was all a mistake,” she said.
 
“I never should have involved you.
 
I had no idea so many people would be involved.”
 
Her voice was unsteady.
 
Marty could sense that she was shaking.
 
“Kendra Wood committed suicide because of me, Marty.
 
She did it because of me.”

Marty felt a river of questions rise up within him but he stamped them down.
 
Now wasn’t the time to ask questions.
 
First, he had to get her to a safe place and then talk.
 

He listened to the silence for clues.
 
She wasn’t outside—no sounds of traffic.
 
Wherever she was, it was quiet.
 
Good
, he thought.
 
She isn’t on the street.
 
“I can help you,” he said calmly.
 
“But you’ll have to trust me.
 
Can you do that?”

Silence.

“Maggie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you try?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“It won’t work any other way.
 
You’re going to have to trust someone.
 
I’m a third party.
 
I’m impartial to all of this.
 
I think you hired me for that reason.”

It was a moment before she spoke.
 
“All right,” she said.
 
“I’ll trust you.”

“Who is following you?”

“A man.”

“Have you lost him?”

“I don’t know,” she said.
 
“I think so.
 
I’m not sure.”

“Tell me where you are.
 
I’ll come for you.”

Silence.

“Tell me where you are, Maggie.”

“They’ve murdered someone else,” she said.

Marty felt a needle of ice dart up his back.

“I’m standing over his body.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

7:52 p.m.

Marty went to his office, removed his gun, a stainless steel Walther PPK, from the top drawer of his desk, loaded it and slipped it into his shoulder rig, which he put on along with a lightweight blazer.
 

He pocketed his cell, left his apartment, hailed a cab at curbside and gave the driver the address Maggie Cain gave him.
 
He did all this with automatic efficiency.
 
The cab swung through the city, lurched through traffic, but he paid no attention.
 
He was not aware of anything but Maggie’s words, still sounding like an alarm in his head:
 
“His blood is everywhere.”

The building was on 77th Street, not far from Fifth.
 
Large and gray with wide stone steps that led to the heavy black door, the building reflected wealth, security, establishment.
 

In spite of the fact that the sun had slipped below the Manhattan horizon, there was not one light on in the building, not one sign that a frightened woman was waiting inside for him.
 
The cab made three passes and Marty saw no one on the sidewalks, no one in the cars parked at the curbsides, nothing that suggested Maggie Cain was being watched or followed.
 
He asked the driver to drop him at the end of the block, handed her a ten and stepped out.

The sidewalk that stretched before him was lined with great black sacks of trash piled high between the slender trees.
 
The air here was heavy and sour, shot through with rot, laced with the exhaust of the city, so rancid it was almost nauseating.
 
Despite being one of Manhattan’s more elegant neighborhoods, when it was trash day, there was no escaping how fair the city could be to everyone, regardless of class.

Save for the sound of the air conditioners cooling the town houses he passed, the street was quiet.
 
Marty kept left, moved down the sidewalk and looked into every shadow, every stairwell, anywhere a person could dip out of sight.
 
Twilight was pressing down on New York and casting everything into its faintly surreal glow.

He moved at a brisk clip, his head slightly lowered.
 

When he reached the building, he discretely checked the sidewalks, saw nobody peering at him through the windows of the surrounding houses and climbed the steps.
 
He tapped once on the door, but it didn’t open.
 
Maggie wasn’t waiting for him.
 
He felt a spark of anger, tried the handle, found it unlocked, pushed and stepped into an arctic blast that revealed a dark entryway.
 
No sign of Maggie, only shapes that loomed left and right, objects he couldn’t make out clearly.