The Kills (33 page)

"Well,
the woman I'm talking about is. DA's office in another borough. Can you imagine
what a role model she must be?"

"Don't
tell me-"

Battaglia
chomped on the cigar and stood up. "Yeah, your friend Olivia. Do me a
favor, Alex; if you decide to go public with your sex life, no illustrations,
please. Check the October issue of that sex-and-the-single-girl's magazine. The
DA's wife saw it in the dentist's office."

"Sorry
to interrupt, Mr. Battaglia. Alex, Will Nedim says it's pretty important."

"Hold
on a minute, Paul. This might be of interest. The Nedim kid is handling the
female defendant who was caught with McQueen Ransome's mink coat. We've been
trying to flip her."

I picked
up Nedim's call. "Will? I've got the boss here with me. Any
developments?"

"We
may have a change of heart on Tiffany Gatts."

"Way
to go. Helena Lisi call you?" I said, referring to Tiffany's lawyer.

"Nope.
Tiffany herself just called. Left a message that she wants to talk to me after
all."

"You
have a plan?"

"I
thought I'd have her produced in my office tomorrow."

"With
the lawyer, of course."

"Certainly.
I thought you might want to be there."

"No
way," I said. "You'll never get anything out of her in my presence.
I'm like a lightning rod for Tiffany Gatts. If she's getting along with you,
let's leave it at that."

I cut
Nedim short, realizing that I was holding up Battaglia. "Nothing to report
yet, Paul. This girl could give us a big break on Kevin Bessemer, if we're
lucky."

He waved
his cigar in the air as he left, a sign that I was to carry on with whatever I
had been doing before he came in the room. I sorted out the usual problems of
the day and ordered in lunch for Mercer and me.

"Bernard
Stark will see us at four o'clock," he reported to me. "He's the
patriarch of the firm. Happy to help. Mike's going to meet us in their offices
on West Fifty-seventh Street. That's the good news."

I smiled
at him. "What's the bad?"

"The
phone company in Massachusetts confirms that a call came in to Spike Logan's
house on the Vineyard the afternoon before he drove into the city."

"You
think he wasn't as surprised about Queenie's death as he told us he was?"

"The
records show the caller's address-the deceased's next-door neighbor. I've checked
with the squad. The guy had already been interviewed by the time he called
Logan, no doubt to give him the sad news. No way that jerk didn't know she was
dead."

We were
eating our sandwiches at my desk at two-thirty when Laura came in with a sheaf
of papers she had pulled out of the fax machine. "I got a call from an
administrative assistant at the CIA," she said. "There will be a hard
copy of these in the mail, with all the formal signatures and seals, but that's
going to take another month. The agent said he was told to comply with Mr.
Battaglia's requests as soon as possible."

"Must
be nice to have a name so big you can throw your weight around gracefully and
get answers the same day," Mercer said. "Maybe these papers will
resolve some questions about our odd group of players."

I thumbed
through the photocopied documents, knowing that the pile wasn't thick enough to
contain anything of value. The answers for the file requests of Victor Vallis,
Harry Strait, and McQueen Ransome had exactly the same explanation as the one
for the late King Farouk.

As the
agency's coordinator of information and privacy, I must advise you that the CIA
can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of any CIA records
responsive to your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of
records containing such information would be classified for reasons of national
security under Section 1.3 (a)(5)-Foreign Relations-of Executive Order 12368.

Mercer
listened to me read him the response before speaking aloud what both of us were
thinking. "The King of Egypt was sent into exile almost half a century
ago, and he's been dead more than thirty years. What the hell does he have to
do with our national security now?"

I was as
captivated by the sparkling gold and silver coins in the window outside the
entrance to the Stark brothers' offices as Holly Golightly had been while
staring at the diamonds on show at Tiffany. Each was displayed against a deep
blue velvet cushion, a setting that was more like a museum's than a retail
operation's.

Mike was
the last to arrive, and we announced ourselves to the receptionist in the
waiting area. He took a quick inventory of the cases of coins. "Some piggy
bank these boys have, huh?"

"You
do anything useful today?" Mercer asked.

"Just
a tidbit here and there. Spent a bit of time trying to figure out who might
have smacked Miss Cooper here upside the shoulder last night."

"You
check with the First Precinct to see if they've had other cases?" I asked.

Mike
turned to Mercer. "I guess I'm just fortunate she doesn't stop by the
apartment in the morning to make sure I put underwear on."

"And
they haven't had anything like it?"

"There
are a few hot spots downtown. But that area between the entrance to the ferry
terminal and the promenade where all the buses stop is kept pretty well
patrolled. Too many Wall Street high rollers to complain about bums and
hustlers."

"You
check on that Correction Department crew she's investigating?"

"We're
getting information on all of them in the perp's team. What their work
schedules are, and even though you can't make a facial ID, I want photos along
with descriptions of their height and weight. Got one other piece of
info."

"What's
that?" Mercer asked.

"Throw
in court officers. Guys in the area with blue uniform pants. Somebody who could
have waited for Coop to leave the building, follow her to the church, and be
waiting for a chance when she came outside."

"I've
got no enemies in that department, I'd be willing to swear," I said,
laughing. "My unit's probably responsible for more hours of overtime than
any group of prosecutors in the office. And Laura bakes cookies for them every
time I'm on trial."

"Well,
your friend Etta Gatts? She's got a brother-in-law who's a court officer.
Little Tiffany's favorite uncle, the brother of her late father."

"Criminal
court?" I asked, racking my brain to think of an officer named Gatts.

"Uh-uh.
Supreme Court, civil term. Sixty Centre Street."

"But
I never-"

"She
told you her people weren't through with you yet. Remember that moment?"

"Yeah,
but Tiffany just called Will Nedim today. He thinks she's ready to roll over
and give up Kevin Bessemer."

"Well,
maybe her mama doesn't know that yet. Think of it, you had to walk directly past
the front steps of his courthouse when you walked downtown last night."

"How
could he know who I was?"

"Don't
be naive, Coop. He could have been in the building with Etta Gatts the first
day she came down here, after Tiffany was arrested. He's got the right uniform,
the right ID-makes sense she would have called him to ask for help. Anybody
could have pointed you out to him then. Might even have been the guy who
slashed your tires that first night."

Mercer
chimed in. "Motive, opportunity-"

"Pretty
soon, the only joint it'll be safe for me to go is P. J. Bernstein's." My
corner deli, fifty feet from the entrance to my building, was the best place
for peace, quiet, and chicken noodle soup when I didn't want to stir far from
home.

"Worst
that can happen there is the latkes give you a little agita," Mike said.

"Mr.
Stark will see you now," the receptionist said, pressing a button on her
desk to open the first locked door leading to the offices. Once the three of us
entered the small space, she buzzed again. The metal grating, like the kind in
safe deposit vaults, swung open to admit us further, security cameras
monitoring our progress.

Bernard
Stark stood behind his desk, in front of a window that gave a sweeping view of
Central Park crowned by a ceiling of rain clouds. He was in his late sixties, I
thought, and seemed quite robust. He had thinning gray hair, a deep tan, a very
warm smile, and was dressed in a nicely tailored suit.

"I've
actually done a lot of work with the federal government, Mr. Wallace-the National
Mint, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Treasury Department. It's not that often
I'm called in to help you people. What can I do for you today?"

Mercer
began the conversation. "We're struggling with an investigation. We
thought maybe you could give us a little guidance, before we take a wrong turn
and get too far off the scent."

"We're
quite willing to pay for your time, your expertise, Mr. Stark," I added.

"Let
me get an idea of what you need. Perhaps I can just point you in the right
direction." He winked at me. "I don't charge for that."

"I'm
afraid there isn't that much to tell right now," Mercer said. "We're
trying to solve a murder case. It appears that someone-or maybe several
people-thought the deceased had some property of significant worth."

"Was
this person a collector?" Stark asked. "Is that why you've come to
me?"

"No,
she wasn't a collector. We found a few things of some value in her home, but
they were gifts given to her many years ago."

"I
see. Was she from a prominent family? Perhaps someone who was a client of my
firm, or an obituary I read about in the newspaper."

Not
unless you subscribe to the
Amsterdam News,
I thought to myself. "No, her murder didn't even merit a mention."

Mercer
reached into his pocket and took out one of his plastic evidence bags, which he
had labeled with information about where and when he had retrieved its
contents. He handed the package to Bernard Stark.

"May
I empty this onto my desk to look them over?"

"Certainly."

Stark
turned the bag upside down and gently slid the twenty coins onto his
exquisitely tooled leather blotter. He spread them out with his forefinger,
moving them around like checkers on a board, ordering them by size and color.

"What
do you see?" Mike asked.

The
dealer was slow to speak. "Most of these have some age on them. That's
obvious from their dates."

"But
their value," the impatient detective asked, "are they worth
anything?"

"These
over here," he said, pointing to a series of small coins that all appeared
to be the same. "They're just proofs. Never actually put into circulation.
Three-cent nickels are what they're called."

"Can
you give me an idea of what they'd bring in at an auction?" Mike asked.

"This
group, dated 1871, you might get a hundred dollars for each of them. Those from
a decade later, maybe two hundred."

Not
exactly a king's ransom, but then we'd each had cases in which people had been
murdered for pocket change, or for parking in the wrong space on the street.

Mercer
removed another bag of coins from his pocket.

"Ah,"
Stark said, taking a jeweler's loop out of his drawer and holding it up to his
eye.

"I
see you've got some foreign pieces, too. Romania, Sweden, Greece-none terribly
valuable, but certainly interesting. You say these belonged to an amateur, not
a collector?"

I didn't
need to tell him they were the property of a thief who had pilfered from a
world-class collector. Bernard Stark was already intrigued.

"My
impression is that the deceased…well," I stalled momentarily,
"she sort of inherited some of these from an old friend. Something like
that, but we're not entirely sure yet."

"Someone
had a good eye here, Ms. Cooper. Transylvania, 1764."

The three
of us leaned in to look at the piece he was holding up to us.

"A
two-ducat piece. Last time I saw something like this," he said, "it
went for almost a thousand dollars."

Most of
the local bodegas in Queenie's neighborhood didn't deal in two-ducat
Transylvanian coins. She probably hadn't been able to tip her errand boys with
it.

"No
offense, Mr. Stark, but can you tell just by eyeballing these things that
they're real?" Mike asked.

"You're
not going to cut in on my business, are you, Detective?" the older man
said, laughing. "That's why people come to me with their gold and silver.
That's what I
do,
Mr. Chapman,
the way you solve crime. And if my eye isn't good enough, there are, of course,
ways to prove the contents of the coins."

We
watched him handle each piece, turning it over and examining both sides.

"See
this little fellow?" Stark asked. He seemed delighted to be poring over
the dregs of Queenie's purloined collection. "Quite unusual. Don't come
across these very often."

"What
is it?" Mike asked.

"An
1844 dime. But Liberty's seated in this one. It's got its nice natural silver
surface with what we like to call champagne toning. Come, come, Mr. Wallace-any
more bags?"

Mercer
handed over the third plastic envelope. This one had several more proofs of
little value, and then Stark's broad smile reappeared as he lifted a large
silver medallion and studied its pale green patina. "Very choice, this.
Very, very choice. Look at the date on this beauty."

He held
out the coin in his hand for each of us to study. The Latin inscription on the
top border translated as "American Liberty." "July Fourth,
1776," I said.

Mike kept
looking for the bottom line. "It doesn't have any number on it. What kind
of coin is it?"

"It's
a medal, actually, not a coin. On the rear you see the infant Hercules-that's
the symbol for the American colonies-defending himself against the cowardly
British leopard. Can you read the Latin on the back?"

"Sorry,
no."

"'Not
without divine aid is the infant bold.' From the Roman poet Horace," Stark
said. "One of these silver medals was given to every member of the
Continental Congress after the battles of Saratoga and Yorktown."

Now Mike
was thoroughly engaged. Warfare did it for him every time. "You've seen
these before?"

"Very
few exist, Mr. Chapman. It was quite a magnificent strike, but small in
quantity."

"What
would you expect to get for it on the street?"

"Wrong
question, Detective. It's got no street value at all-that's my point. It wasn't
issued as a coin. But it's got major value in the auction market. The last of
these fetched many thousands of dollars."

Stark's
secretary entered the room with a large tray. It was decoupaged, covered with
coins of every size and color. On it she carried a coffeepot and an assortment
of sodas.

We each
helped ourselves to something to drink.

Stark
held his cup and saucer, standing at the window now as rain slapped against it.
"I don't mind giving you a hand with whatever you're doing, but I hope you
plan to let me in on your little secret."

"Secret?"
Mike asked.

"My
family has been in this business for almost a century, and we know where most
of the rarest coins in the world have been bought and sold over the years. The
minute you walk out my door," Stark said, "I can check our records
for
Libertas Americana
and
probably figure out where this very piece has been hiding for the past half
century."

I wasn't
planning to test him, but Queenie had been holding on to it for longer than
that.

"I
can be much more useful to you if I know what I'm dealing with," Stark
went on, turning his back to stare out at the view, and giving us the
opportunity to signal each other in agreement. I nodded at Mike-Queenie's
homicide was his case.

"We
don't know what we should be looking for, Mr. Stark. We don't know what the bad
guys were looking for, either, and we have no idea whether they've found it.
The woman who died," he said, after some deliberation, "was an
eighty-two-year-old invalid who lived alone in an apartment in Harlem."

"With
these coins? Unsecured, in her home?"

"Strewn
about the floor of her closet and overlooked by whoever burglarized her
place-and that person may, or may not, have been her killer."

Mike
paused before going on. "Nobody would have known it to see her now, but
back when she was a kid, my victim had an affair with one of the richest men in
the world. He was the collector-he was the one she got these babies from,"
he said, playing the coins back and forth on the green blotter.

Stark was
ready for the chase. He sat down at his desk and swiveled his chair to face his
computer screen. "I'm sure I can check him in our database. There hasn't
been an American in this game-auctions or private acquisitions-since the Starks
have been in business that didn't get some of his coins from us."

"That's
part of the problem," Mike said. "This guy wasn't here in the States.
He wasn't American."

Mike
looked to Mercer one more time, and got the nod to tell the dealer. "In
fact, he was the King of Egypt."

Bernard
Stark pushed back from the keyboard and looked Mike Chapman in the eye.
"This woman kept part of Farouk's collection in her bedroom closet? I'm
not the least bit surprised that she's dead."

Bernard
Stark pushed the pile of coins away and stood again, walking to close the door
of his office. "No good has befallen anyone who's come into contact with
Farouk's treasures. It's quite surprising the government never knocked on your
victim's door, demanding a full accounting."

Mike was
ready to take Stark into his confidence. "Let's say Queenie didn't come by
these ducats in the most honorable way. Let's say she thought the old boy owed
her a few quid, and she grabbed some fists full of gold and silver."

"That
makes more sense. The feds wouldn't have known where to look, and a lot of this
would have come back onto the market with your victim having no clue of the
value of the things she had stolen," Stark said, thinking aloud.