Three-Day Town (19 page)

I waggled one foot at him and lifted a carton of outrageously expensive buffalo cheese. “They were right next to the fresh mozzarella,” I said.

CHAPTER

16

The department is broken up into many divisions, with just as many different functions as there are divisions…. For example, there [is]the Detective Bureau, with its interesting machinery for the detection of crime and criminals.

—
The New New York
, 1909

S
IGRID
H
ARALD
—M
ONDAY MORNING

U
pon succeeding to Captain McKinnon’s position, Captain Jane Fortesque had instituted formal weekly briefings. After that first uncomfortable session in which she patted Sigrid’s hand and sniped at the lieutenant’s celebrity status, Sigrid was careful to get there early enough to choose her own chair rather than being stuck with whichever was left over. Today she greeted the other early arrivals and took a seat halfway down the long conference table. She was well aware of the psychological inferences that could be drawn if she sat at the far end, but she had no desire to put herself within patting distance of Fortesque if she could help it. She had not resented the woman’s promotion from another house, and had Fortesque continued Mac’s hands-off style, the new order would not have bothered Sigrid.

Gruff and demanding, Mac had been of the trust ’em or bust ’em school of leadership. Even though he was now married to her mother, he had never patted her hand and he had not cared what his subordinates did on their own time as long as it did not reflect badly on the force.

Not only was Fortesque a micromanager, she also believed in team spirit. Some NYPD cynics held that the only way a woman could advance to a position of true power within the system was on her knees while trying not to get her tongue caught in the zipper. This was not a charge that had ever been leveled at Captain Fortesque. The luck of being in the right place at the right time and seizing the initiative had earned her a spot on a narcotics squad in Harlem where she had, without question, done solid work.

It was known that she was not shy about taking a generous share of the professional credit when she turned in her reports and that she had a talent for dropping innocent-sounding double-edged remarks about colleagues when in the presence of power, but she deflected serious criticism by becoming a tireless cheerleader for the personal milestones of those she worked with and for. She noted birthdays and anniversaries with cupcakes or a box of doughnuts and was a relentlessly hearty worker. Even those who resented her found it hard to voice that resentment when their mouths were full of Krispy Kremes.

(“They probably recommended her for promotion just to keep from choking on the sugar,” Hentz said when he realized that Sigrid was gritting her teeth.)

Pictures on the captain’s wall showed versions of a tall, rawboned woman in varied attire through the years. There she was in her official police uniform at her swearing-in ceremony, and here she was wearing shirts with lettering across the chest and holding enormous bowling and softball trophies, several of which now stood on the shelves in her office. By the time of the latest picture, wherein the police commissioner shook Fortesque’s hand in congratulation while Mac looked on, the captain wore an artfully draped suit meant to disguise the extra pounds she was packing.

She occasionally spoke wistfully of the softball and bowling teams she had played on and of the camaraderie such activities fostered. So far, she had not insisted that similar teams be formed here, but Sigrid lived in dread.

Nevertheless, even though she could no longer run baselines or bowl strikes, their new captain seemed determined to encourage off-duty personal relationships among her squad leaders. Sigrid had been forced to attend more than one after-work session at the cop bar near their station so that the captain could offer a toast to someone’s birthday or to celebrate the confirmation, bar mitzvah, or graduation of a colleague’s child. Worse, Sigrid had been horrified to find herself the recipient of a fulsome toast on her own birthday the previous February and had already planned to be on vacation when her next one rolled around.

“That woman needs a hobby,” she had muttered to an amused Sam Hentz.

“Or a husband,” he had murmured back.

“Muffins on me!” Captain Fortesque said, setting two fragrant boxes and a stack of napkins on the conference table in front of one of the squad heads. “Lieutenant Hess became the grandmother of twins Thursday night. A girl and a boy. Amanda and Jackson, right, Lieutenant?”

“Annabelle and Jack, right,” Lieutenant Hess said, beaming proudly as she pulled the first muffin from the box. “Almost seven pounds each.”

As the others murmured congratulations, Hess passed the boxes and napkins on down the table.

“I’ve decided that bran muffins are healthier than our sugary doughnuts,” Fortesque said as the boxes made their way past Sigrid, who took a muffin and set it on the napkin before her. “Most of us could stand to cut back on the calories.” She patted her ample middle. “Not you, of course, Lieutenant Harald. In fact, you really ought to eat two. And start adding cream to your coffee.”

Sigrid forced herself to smile and broke off a piece of the muffin. This was not the first time the captain had implied that she was too skinny. It would be futile to point out to the woman that one of these “healthy” muffins—rich and buttery and thickly studded with walnuts and raisins—probably packed more calories than two or three doughnuts. Instead, having skipped breakfast this morning, she took a second bite and opened her notes.

Saturday night’s homicide put her at the top of the agenda, but did not keep her there. No sooner had she finished reporting the bare facts of Phil Lundigren’s death and what lines her squad were pursuing than Fortesque gave her a beneficent smile, said, “I’m sure you and your squad will do your usual superb job, Lieutenant,” then turned to Narcotics with happy anticipation.

During yesterday’s snowfall, a Nissan sedan with a Florida license plate had crept cautiously up Eighth Avenue. Instead of going with the flow when the green light changed to yellow, the Nissan slammed on its brakes and a cab skidded into its rear end. It was the usual snow-related fender bender with no real damage to either car.

Except that it sprung the lock on the Nissan trunk.

A passing patrol car stopped to assess the situation, whereupon the driver of the Nissan and his passenger tried to flee. One thing led to another, as it so often does. After picking the driver up from the icy pavement where he had slipped and fallen, the officers asked for and received permission to look into the trunk even though it was standing wide open and they could see several clear plastic bags full of fresh green vegetable matter, which as they now knew had been harvested the night before over in a Bensonhurst basement and was then on its way to a packager and distribution point in Morningside Heights.

“Eleven arrests so far and more to come,” Narcotics crowed. “The feds are very happy with us right now.”

Captain Fortesque was moved to tell how aspects of this incident paralleled her own rise through the ranks. “If those two on the beat had driven on past without stopping, that stuff would soon be out on the streets. Good police work makes good opportunities.”

And stupid criminals make good police work easy
, Sigrid thought as she tried to match the respectful interest she saw on the faces of her colleagues. She wondered if any of them were also thinking,
Who’s dumb enough to let a Floridian drive a valuable load of weed in a snowstorm?

When they were dismissed and Sigrid returned to her own squad room, she was pleased to see progress.

IAFIS had turned up a second shoplifting charge against Antoine Clarke only two years ago, and Vlad Ruzicka had been charged with an assault in what looked like a fistfight with someone in his neighborhood over a leaf-blowing incident last year. He had been fined and put on unsupervised probation. The others seemed to be as law-abiding as they claimed.

Detective Tildon was already engrossed with cross-matching the guest lists. “I’ve eliminated eight names that left before nine o’clock and four that didn’t get there till after ten,” he said, a satisfied smile on his round face. “Another bunch claim not to have left 6-C from the time they arrived till after the body was discovered, and they can cite friends to back them up.”

Although a husband and father first, Tillie loved the details and minutiae of police work, especially if they could be reduced to a list or a simple diagram. As a schoolboy, his orderly soul had found joy in diagramming compound-complex sentences or in working out complicated quadratic equations. Merging the many partial lists that the officers had collected from Luna DiSimone’s guests was a real treat for him.

Yanitelli had made rough IDs for several of the fingerprints. “I’ve matched prints from the toilet seat with the first guy who said he went in. His and Mrs. Lundigren’s were the only prints in that front bathroom. Nothing but smudges in the master bath. Our Brit, the guy with the blue Mohawk? He left one clear thumbprint on the lower outer corner of the medicine cabinet mirror and a corresponding index print on the inside corner, so he probably had a look-see at the contents. Maybe after prescription drugs?”

“Or an antacid,” Hentz said pessimistically as he took off his tailored charcoal jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. “He did imply that he was there longer than normal because he wasn’t feeling well. What about the French doors?”

“Nothing usable from them, but we found Lundigren’s on that wooden cat. They overlapped his wife’s prints.”

“That tallies with what the wife told us,” Sigrid said. “She admits taking the cat from DiSimone’s apartment and that she let Lundigren believe it came from 6-A. According to her, he went up that night not to check on the noisy party, but to return that cat.” She glanced over at Tillie. “Does anyone mention seeing the super go into 6-A?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Lieutenant?” Elaine Albee had her hand over the mouthpiece of her desk phone. “Mrs. Wall on two.”

Sigrid picked up the nearest phone. “Mrs. Wall? Lieutenant Harald here.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Lieutenant. I have emailed you the name of the elevator man that we let go—the one that Antoine Clarke replaced—but I thought perhaps I should speak to you personally.”

“Yes?”

“You’re aware that Antoine left his post yesterday morning without any notice?”

“Yes, we were told that.” Sigrid held up her hand for silence and pressed the phone’s speaker button so that the others could hear.

“The thing is, his girlfriend’s called twice this morning,” said Mrs. Wall. “She says Antoine never came home yesterday and he’s not answering his mobile. She’s worried that something’s happened to him.”

“Give me her name and number,” Sigrid said, “and we’ll check into it. In the meantime, we still want to speak to your son Corey.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but he’s not due home from school until three.”

By the time she hung up, the others had begun to connect the dots.

“Antoine Clarke’s done a runner on us?” asked Yanitelli.

“He was in the building Saturday evening,” said Lowry.

“And we know that he has at least two Class A misdemeanors,” Albee chimed in.

Hentz leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. Stainless steel links gleamed in the French cuffs of his crisp white shirt. “If he’s worked there two years, he’s probably had opportunity to acquire a few passkeys.”

Tillie walked over to their whiteboard and began constructing one of his detailed timetables. At the top, he wrote,
Time of Death—9:50–11 p.m. Saturday night.

To one side he wrote,
Employees in the Building
, and in alphabetical order listed Antoine Clarke, Jani Horvath, Sidney Jackson, and Denise Lundigren as being there at the relevant time.

“Jackson worked the elevator until eleven,” Sigrid said, “and everyone says people streamed in and out all evening.”

Hentz went back to his notes. “Horvath said he slept till he relieved Jackson a little before eleven, which is when Jackson said he went home. You think Jackson would have had enough time to sneak back up and kill Lundigren before you and Judge Knott entered the apartment?”

“Maybe,” Sigrid said slowly, “but Denise Lundigren says her husband called right before he left her to see if the Bryants were there. Tillie, contact the ones who admitted being in the apartment and ask if they heard the telephone ring around ten o’clock. It wouldn’t take him an hour to return the cat and no one seems to have seen him after he left his own apartment. Did a canvass of the building turn up anything?”

“There are forty-five apartments,” Elaine Albee said, reading from a list compiled on Saturday night. “The uniforms say they knocked on every door. No responses from twenty-one, and eight of those twenty-one still didn’t answer the door when we tried them yesterday. At least half of those were out of town, according to their neighbors. The Rices in 7-A will be in with their lawyer today. The owner in 3-C told one of the officers that Lundigren fixed a leaky faucet in her kitchen around five-thirty. No one else admits to seeing or speaking to him after that.”

“The wife says they watched television that evening and they had words about her taking things from various apartments,” Sigrid said. “So he leaves with the cat about ten.”

Tillie added that to the neat timetable he was compiling.

“Let’s say he lets himself in through the back door and surprises Antoine in the act of stealing those little gold-and-enamel boxes and the judge’s earrings. Antoine hands the earrings back, then picks up that chunky bronze piece and smashes Lundigren on the head. Lundigren goes down, Antoine tries to stash the body on the balcony but doesn’t quite get the door shut.”