The Kills (3 page)

"Who
then?"

"The
commissioner. Don't worry, the Boss isn't angry. He just wants to know some
background before he takes the call." She had intercepted the message and
was giving me the opportunity to explain the situation to the DA, so he could
be in the driver's seat during his conversation with the police commissioner.

The boss
wasn't upset yet, because the screw-up was the doing of the NYPD. He just
wanted to know the extent of our complicity before he pointed his finger at the
cops.

Battaglia
exhaled as I entered the room, the smoke from his Cohiba obscuring the
expression on his face. "Why don't you sit down and bring me up to speed,
Alex?"

Unless I
was in his office to deliver good news-a DNA databank cold hit, the sentencing
of a serial rapist, a bit of personal gossip he could deposit in his limitless
storehouse of information-I preferred to stand and answer the questions he had
ready for me, leaving as rapidly as I had arrived.

He
glanced at the paper on his desk. "This-this Bessemer character. Why'd you
need him brought down here?"

"I'm
about to start a trial, Paul. The defendant is a guy-"

"Yeah,
Andrew Tripping. That military nut who was disciplining his kid."

There were
more than six hundred assistant district attorneys in Battaglia's office, the
best training ground for litigators in the entire country. No detail was too
small to engage Battaglia's attention, and there was no fact that I had ever
briefed him on that he couldn't call up from memory unless it had to do with
money I asked for to fund a special sex crimes project.

"It's
a tough case, Boss. And last week Mercer Wallace got a call that one of
Tripping's cellmates from the time he was in Rikers had some useful admissions
to give me. Something that might put my rape victim over the top."

"Like
what?"

"That's
what I was supposed to find out, right about now."

The left
side of Battaglia's mouth pulled back as he talked around the large cigar stub
that hung between his lips. "You're losing your charm, Alex. Who thought a
prisoner would prefer his freedom to tea and crumpets with you? How unusual was
this arrangement?"

"Not
very. The routine dance. He refused to tell the cops exactly what he had to
offer until he eyeballed me to see what I was willing and able to do for him. I
wouldn't talk possibilities till I knew what he was putting on the table."

"Promises?"

"Of
course not. I was fairly skeptical." Snitches like Bessemer usually did
more harm than good in a case like this. He had waited too long to make his
offer seem sincere, and he was just as likely to be jerking me around as to
have any tidbits of value. I couldn't refuse to see him without knowing what he
might be sitting on, but I wasn't prepared to waste a great deal of time
playing with him. CIs were the bottom feeders of the prison population.

"Worth
the embarrassment of putting him back on the street while he's on his way to
keep a date with you?" Battaglia asked.

"Not
for a second. But, Boss, in more than a decade here, I've never heard of
anything like this happening. I've had prisoners produced here scores of
time-we all have. This was completely unpredictable."

"You
had a loser of a case before Bessemer's phone call to the cops. So you still
got a loser."

Now both
sides of his mouth pulled back around the cigar into a broad smile. He went on
to explain how he knew. "I just heard from Judge Moffett. Wants me to lean
on you to be more reasonable."

I smiled
back. That was one thing Paul Battaglia would never do. If my judgment call was
a belief that the defendant was guilty as charged, and I thought I could prove
it, then the district attorney's only rule was for me to do the right thing. It
was one reason I loved working for the man.

"Is
that why he called you?"

"In
part. He wants to know what's in this case for Peter Robelon. How can Tripping
afford his rates?"

Robelon
was a partner in a small firm, a well-regarded boutique that specialized in
white-collar litigation. His fees were among the highest in the New York
bar-$450 an hour.

"I
think there's some family money. Tripping's mother died about a year ago,
several months before these events occurred. She had been raising her grandson
until that point. She left everything she had to the defendant." I hadn't
been able to discover anything unusual from the bank records.

"Interesting,
but only if she had enough to cover the retainer and trial costs."
Battaglia paused. "Robelon's dirty, Alex. I've got good reason to know.
Watch your back."

"You
want to tell me what you mean?" I asked. Peter Robelon had often been
mentioned as a possible candidate to oppose Battaglia in the next election.

"Not
for the time being." Battaglia protected his hoard of information like an
eagle on its nest. The fact that I had spent the last year in a serious
relationship with a television news reporter made him far less likely to trust
me with something sensitive that could play into his political future.
"Did Peter know about this Bessemer guy? Is his escape anything Peter
could have had a hand in engineering?"

I was
caught completely off-guard by his question. "That never crossed my
mind."

"Well,
keep it open, Alex. And if you're going to go belly-up on this case, do it
fast. We've got a busy fall lineup and I'd like your help drafting some of the
legislative proposals for the next session."

I
returned to my office to find Mercer sitting at my desk, still working the
phone. I motioned to him to stay put and sat facing him, waiting for him to
finish his conversation. From over my shoulder I heard a knock on my office
door, which was ajar. Detective Mike Chapman braced himself against the jamb,
smiled at me broadly as he ran the fingers of his right hand through his thick
black hair.

"Hey,
Coop. What am I bid for one 'Get out of jail free' card? Only slightly used by
the very nimble Kevin Bessemer."

I looked
at Mercer. "Why do I think I'm about to be told what a sucker I was to
fall for Mr. Bessemer's proffer of prosecutorial assistance? Do I owe Mike's
appearance to the fact that you've run out of chits to call in?"

Before
Mercer Wallace transferred to the Special Victims Unit several years ago, he
and Mike had worked together at the elite Manhattan North Detective Squad. Like
me, Mercer thrived on making the system work better for women who were victims
of violence. Like the jurors of whom Moffett spoke, Mike preferred murder.
There was none of the emotional baggage of traumatized rape victims to deal
with, nor any hand-holding, dissembling, or cross-examination of living,
breathing witnesses.

"He's
my go-to man, you know that, Alex."

"And
if I've got what you need, you buying dinner?" Mike asked.

"What
I need is for Kevin Bessemer to walk up to a beat cop and ask for directions to
my office."

"So
where'd the guys from Brooklyn tell you this went down, Mercer?"

"Came
off the ramp from the Triborough Bridge, heading here. Four-car pileup right in
front of them-"

"And
while they're watching some poor slob from Highway One clear up the mess, Kevin
gives new meaning to E-ZPass, hops out of the unmarked narc-mobile, starts
singing 'Feet don't fail me now,' and hightails it off into the sunset right in
his own 'hood? That's what you hear?"

"Look,
Mike, if you know something different, tell me," I said. "Let me
score a few points with Battaglia, so he can tell the PC."

"The
real deal? These morons from Narcotics tried to sweeten the pot for Kevin. Gave
him a slight detour on his way downtown."

"How'd
you find out?"

"Walter
DeGraw. His kid brother's in the unit." Maybe Mike wasn't joking. DeGraw
was solid as a rock.

"Where
to?"

"Seems
whenever they want something from Bessemer, he's much more cooperative after
he's had some fried chicken and a piece of uptown ass. They made a pit stop at his
girlfriend's apartment. One Hundred Twelth and Second Avenue."

"You
can't be serious?" I was furious.

"It's
not the first time. The cops were sitting at the kitchen table, nibbling on
wings and watching
One Life to Live
while Bessemer was supposed to be relieving his sexual tension in the
bedroom."

"And
when they took a commercial break?"

"The
window was wide-open. The bed had never been touched. The fire escape ran
straight down five stories to an alleyway behind the projects. Bessemer and the
girl were both in the wind."

"Tonight's
'Final Jeopardy' category is Astronomy," Alex Trebek told us after Mike
had coaxed me away from my desk shortly before seven-thirty to turn on the
television in the public relations office down the hall from my own.

"Don't
waste my time. I've got work to do so I can go home and get a good night's
sleep."

"Whoa,
whoa, whoa, blondie. Throwing in the towel 'cause you didn't take any science
courses at Wellesley? Well, I never studied it either. But I did spend some
time in the planetarium recently, don't you remember?" Mike winked at me
as I nodded my head. "What do you say, Mercer, ten bucks apiece?"

The three
of us had a long-standing habit of betting on the "Final Jeopardy"
question whenever we happened to be together at this hour, whether in a station
house, a bar, or at a crime scene.

"A
dime it is," Mercer answered, and I nodded my head while the three
contestants entered their multi-thousand-dollar bids on their private
scorecards. "What did you tell Paige Vallis, Alex? You want me to bring
her to meet with you in the afternoon?"

"We
won't get to her tomorrow. I spent so much time prepping her last weekend that
I think she's really ready to go. If we get anywhere near finished picking the
jury by midday Friday, we can get her in then. Meanwhile, let her stay away
from my office and go about her normal routine. She's more likely to keep
calm."

"The
answer is," Trebek said, stepping aside to reveal the printed statement in
the blue box on the large screen, "'Warrior who called Halley's comet his
"personal star," sparking European invasion that massacred
millions.'"

Mercer
folded his bill in the shape of a paper plane and sailed it at Mike. "Who
was Attila the Hun?"

"This
was rigged." I laughed. "You must have known it was really a history
question." Mike had majored in the field at Fordham, and knew more about
military history than anyone I had ever encountered. "Before I hand over
ten, how about William the Conqueror?"

"Not
a bad guess for either of you." He clucked his tongue the same way Trebek
did at our wrong answers. "Who was Genghis Khan?" That would be the
winning ticket.

"Yes,
Mr. Wallace, a comet did portend the sack of Gaul, and you were very close, Ms.
Cooper. William embarked on the Norman invasion when Halley's comet streaked
by, calling it a sign from heaven.

"But
it was Khan who thought it was his personal star. Twelve twenty-two. Swooped
down from Mongolia and killed everyone he could find in southeastern
Europe."

"You
don't mind if I go back to work, do you?" I headed out the door as Mike
started to play with the remote.

"She
almost had the right answer. Only off by two hundred years and one continent. I
can't believe that guy I told you about called her a dumb blonde," I heard
him say to Mercer before I was ten feet away.

"What
guy?" I made a U-turn and stuck my head back in the door. "Who called
me dumb?"