The Kills (24 page)

Mike
Chapman was sitting in my chair, feet up on my desk, gnawing on a bagel, when I
dragged back downstairs to my office.

"Good
morning, sunshine. You look like you're in need of a turn in your luck. Ah, the
wonders of the automated fingerprint identification system," he said.

"Fingerprints?
Where?"

"Queenie's
apartment. The lifts we got off the plastic toilet seat. This one'll please
you."

"Just
give me his name. I'm too whipped to guess."

"Little
Miss Sweet Sixteen. Your snitch Kevin Bessemer's child bride, carrying her old
mink coat."

"What?"

"Tiffany
Gatts herself was inside Queenie Ransome's apartment."

"In
case you were searching for the lowest common denominator between the two women
who were killed-Queenie Ransome and Paige Vallis-looks like the computer found
it for you. And I do mean the lowest," Mike said. "Killing that old
lady for a long-dead rodent? Kevin Bessemer and Tiffany Gatts."

I
remembered the initials on the lining of Queenie's coat:
R du R.
"Why didn't it cross my mind
that the mink could have been hers?
R
as in Ransome."

"
R
as in Robelon," Mike answered me.
"Her initials still don't fit the monogram. Why would you think someone
living on social security in a Harlem tenement was likely to be the owner of a
Parisian-made fur coat, I don't know. We need to talk to that kid."

"Did
you check with Corrections? Is Tiffany Gatts still in jail?"

"Yep."

"Who's
got her case?"

"Nedim.
Will Nedim. Trial Bureau Thirty."

"Call
him for me. Tell him to get the girl's lawyer over here as soon as possible. We
need to put in an order to produce Tiffany this afternoon, if he can do it that
fast. Let's see whether she rolls over and gives us Kevin Bessemer when we tell
her she's a suspect in a murder case," I said.

"Usually
I'm not so dense. I get lost in the forest, I can follow the trail of bread
crumbs to get me out of the woods," Mike said. "Tripping's in Rikers
for raping Paige Vallis and beating his own son. Kevin Bessemer's his cellmate.
Bessemer waits until the eve of trial and decides to be a snitch against
Tripping. On his way to see you, Bessemer stops for some nooky with Gatts, and
they're both gone with the wind. Ransome is found dead. Gatts is locked up.
Paige Vallis testifies. The Tripping kid disappears. Vallis is killed. But for
the life of me I can't think of anything to connect Queenie Ransome to the
Vallis girl. You got any bread crumbs to put on my path?"

"Sure.
That's why we're going to lean on the weakest link. Get me Gatts. Kevin
Bessemer is the only person linked to both cases."

By two
o'clock, Mike Chapman, Will Nedim, and I were sitting in my conference room
with Helena Lisi, counsel for Tiffany Gatts. I had laid out the new evidence
that placed Gatts in the apartment of McQueen Ransome. Lisi had given
permission for her client to be picked up from the Women's House of Detention
and brought to my office so the two of them could talk about what we had discovered.

When
detectives arrived with the handcuffed Gatts, we stepped out of the room so
Lisi and the teenager could confer privately.

"Lisi's
your vintage, no? Same age?"

She had
started at the Legal Aid Society, defending indigent prisoners, shortly before
I joined Battaglia's staff more than a decade ago. "Yeah. She and her
husband opened their own firm a few years back. Remember him? Jimmy Lisi? They
handle mostly low-level crimes, here and the Bronx."

"Hookers
and humps?"

"Yeah.
Not exactly who you'd hire if Battaglia had you in his sights in a major
investigation. Fine for a few nickel bags of dope and a stolen fur that should
have been in mothballs," I said.

"Give
me a pair of sharp scissors and some elocution lessons, I could make Helena
Lisi a contender."

Lisi was
short, squat, and pushing forty. She had drab brown hair that hung in straggly
clumps below her buttocks, pinned in place from the front by a black velvet
headband. Her accent called up some remote part of Brooklyn, and was aggravated
by a dreadful, constant whine that cut through me like a saw.

"I'll
take her just the way she is," I said. "If she had any more serious
clientele than she's got, and she couldn't plead them out before trial like she
does ninety-nine percent of the time, I couldn't make it through from opening
to summation. The voice just wears me down."

"You
think Helena is pelican division?" Mike asked. He'd had a running gag for
years, creating something he called the CPD-Chapman's Perpetrators'
Dictionary-filled with street lingo for criminal justice situations. Lawyers
appointed by the court were selected from a panel monitored by the Appellate
Division of New York's Supreme Court, and the word "appellate" had
become universally bastardized by defendants, who referred to it as the
"pelican division."

"An
arraignment and criminal-court plea with Helena Lisi would probably fit fine in
Mrs. Gatts's budget. Check with Nedim. I'd guess the mother paid for a private
lawyer for her little girl."

We were
interrupted by Laura, my secretary, who told me that the judge's clerk wanted
to speak with me. I picked up the phone on a nearby desk and punched the
extension. "Hello? This is Alex Cooper."

"Judge
Moffett asked me to give you a call. Dulles Tripping's foster mother just
phoned. The boy is back at home, safe and sound."

"What
a relief," I said, resting my forehead in my hand. "Thank God that's
been resolved successfully. Any idea where he's been?"

"Upstate
with friends is all we've been told. Moffett's going to give you a few more
days. He's putting the case over until next Monday-a week from today. He wants
the boy to settle in at home, and then you can arrange your interview for the
end of this week, when he's had a chance to calm down."

"Thanks
so much. Has the judge told Peter Robelon yet that he's going to allow me to
interview Dulles? And the boy's lawyers?"

"Hey,
Alex. Between the two of us-are we off the record?"

"Sure."

"Well,
don't get your hopes up. I overheard him talking to Robelon about the
kid."

"When?"

"Just
now. Peter Robelon called to make sure that Mrs. Wykoff got through to Moffett
with the news. I heard him say that the mistrial was a lock. He's giving you
the extra time to humor you, and to get some kind of transition set up for
Dulles, so that he's not returned to his father without controls and some kind
of monitoring in place. But don't knock yourself out on your research, Alex,
'cause there's not a prayer in hell that Moffett is letting you go forward with
your case."

"Thanks
for the heads-up," I said. Good news, bad news.

Helena
Lisi stood in the doorway. "May I come in?"

Chapman
stood and pulled up another chair. "Take a number."

"I
don't need to sit, Alex. I've advised Tiffany not to cooperate with you."
Lisi's voice scratched like fingernails on a chalkboard.

"I'm
really surprised. You've explained the new evidence to her? You told her she's
looking at a murder charge?"

"D'you
tell her that if Coop sends her up the river for slaughtering an
eighty-two-year-old woman, P. Diddy'll be Puff Great-Granddaddy by the time she
sees daylight?"

"I
don't look at it that way, Detective. You don't have anything on Tiffany. She
and her mother used to live on the same block as the deceased. Any of the kids
will tell you she was in and out of Ms. Ransome's apartment all the time, just
like the rest of them. Tiffany carried her groceries, helped her with
laundry-"

"I'm
talking a fresh set of prints, Ms. Lisi. Not old, not smudged."

She
ignored Chapman and kept talking to me. "Actuarially, Alex, McQueen
Ransome's life expectancy wouldn't have been-"

"What
did you just say?" Mike asked.

"I
said that if you look at an actuarial table for African-American women in the
United States, living below the poverty level, you'll find that the average
life span-"

"That
is the single most stupid remark I've ever heard in my life," Mike said.
"You're gonna stand in front of a judge at Tiffany Gatt's arraignment and
ask for bail because Queenie would have dropped dead someday anyway? I'd like
to take that hideous hank of hair you use for toilet paper and wrap it around
your throat for about ten minutes, nice and tight so you can't breathe too
good. Maybe when I let go it'll open up some of the arteries that are supposed
to be feeding your brain."

"You
want me to advise my client to cooperate with someone who talks to me like
this?" Helena asked. "Her mother already thinks you're railroading
her daughter, Alex."

"Fingerprints
in the deceased's apartment and Ms. Ransome's coat on her back. It's a
compelling combination," I said.

"What
about the coat? The lady was hardly aristocracy. Explain to me how Ransome's
name matches up to the monogram in the coat."

I
couldn't.

"Maybe
she bought it at a secondhand shop," Mike offered.

Helena
Lisi ignored him. "I told Tiffany everything. She doesn't want to talk to
you and that's all there is to it. Can you get her back to Rikers before
dinnertime so she doesn't miss a meal?"

I
followed Helena across the hallway and into the conference room, where a female
detective and her partner were guarding the teenager. As I entered the room to
give them instructions to return the prisoner for lodging, Tiffany clicked her
tongue against the roof of her mouth, letting out an audible "tssssh"
at the sight of me. She murmured to her keepers, "What the bitch want?"

I told
the team to get started back to the jail. As they directed Tiffany to stand up
and placed the cuffs on her, she kicked against the table leg with the toe of
her sneaker.

"I
ain't got nothing to say to you, so don't be bothering my lawyer again, you
hear?"

"Tiffany,"
Helena said, flicking her hair off her shoulder, "don't speak another
word."

"I
can say whatever I want. She don't control me. I don't want to be in her
office, I don't want her to be in my face-"

"Stop
talking, Tiffany," Helena said. "I want you to be quiet right
now."

"Shit.
My mother paying you, lady. Don't you tell me to shut up. You working for
us
now."

"I'm
asking you to be quiet, Tiffany, because I know what's best for you. I'm your
lawyer."

"Yeah,
but that bitch ain't," the girl said, jerking her head toward me.

"There's
no reason to be saying anything," Helena again cautioned her agitated
client.

Tiffany
looked up at me as the detectives tried to pull her along. "You can't
prove no murder case on me, sweetheart. By the time I got to that ol' lady's
house, she was already dead."

"How
many times have you heard that one before? 'I was counting on killing Queenie,
but she was already dead when I got there,'" Mike said, mocking the girl.

I didn't
dismiss Tiffany Gatts's denial as easily as he did. "It's one thing when
you get that kind of statement thrown at you from somebody who's been through
the system a few times. This kid's just flailing around like she's been hung
out to dry. Maybe it's the truth."