1 Runaway Man (21 page)

“Then who’s behind all of this?” Feldman pressed him. “Why is it happening?”

“Donnie, I wish I knew. But I don’t.”

The commissioner shot a cold, hard look at Legs Diamond. “In that case, Lieutenant, I have two words of advice for you—find out.”

*   *   *

“WHERE ARE WE GOING NOW
?
”

“Ronkonkoma,” Legs informed me quietly as he steered us across the Williamsburg Bridge to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. He’d been pensive ever since we’d retraced our footsteps from the private dining room to his car.

“On the island? What’s out there?”

“It’s not a what. It’s a who. Her name’s Judith Heintz.” He glanced across the seat at me. “I didn’t share everything just now with the commissioner. Didn’t much care for the company he was keeping.”

“Really? Because I thought Jake was adorable.”

“I told you the nine-mil slug you dug out of that wall on West 12th matched the slugs that killed Bruce Weiner, remember?”

“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten.”

“Well, there’s another body on that gun. An identical slug was pulled out of a lady named Martine Price in Jackson Heights, Queens, three weeks ago. She was killed in a home invasion.”

We were crossing the Kosciuszko Bridge now. On the other side of it we picked up the Long Island Expressway, Legs maneuvering his battered sedan with high-speed ease through the sluggish evening traffic.

“Martine was fifty-two and unmarried. She lived alone in one half of a two-family house. Her kitchen door was jimmied. She was shot twice. Her jewelry box was emptied. Her silver was taken. They didn’t get a whole lot. She didn’t have a lot, although she did own the building. Len Wood, the detective who handled the case, told me he had zilch to work with. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. No prints or trace evidence. Just the two slugs. Martine’s tenants and neighbors all described her as a nice, quiet lady who kept to herself. She was a registered nurse employed by Sanctuary Health, a private home-care provider. Saw to the needs of housebound patients in Brooklyn and Queens. Elderly, mostly.” His eyes flicked up at his rearview mirror once, twice, three times. “She went to work for Sanctuary four years ago. Wood spoke to her supervisor there to see if maybe one of her patients has a relative with a sheet—a grandson or nephew who she might have pissed off or whatever. But that angle didn’t pan out. Everyone who came in contact with Martine loved her.”

“Forgive me, but I still don’t see what this has to do with—”

“Stay with me. The Sanctuary people kept Martine’s job application in their files. Prior to working for Sanctuary she was an ICU nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital for twelve years.”

“And?…”

“And prior to that she worked for a high-end Park Avenue doctor named John Sykes.”

I felt my pulse quicken. “The Kidd family’s private physician. He brought a nurse with him to Nevis. That must have been Martine. She was there when Bruce was born. She brought him back to New York with Dr. Sykes. And she took care of him in that apartment on East 39th Street until the adoption went through. We’ve got ourselves another victim, haven’t we?”

“You got that right.” Legs’s eyes flicked at the rearview mirror again.

“Are we being tailed?”

“I thought so for a sec, but it’s just a juiced-up Trans Am cowboy.” He frowned at me. “
What
apartment on East 39
th
Street?”

“I got the real deal from Paul Weiner today. How they got the baby, all of it.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Crowbar. Walked in on him banging a teenaged hooker in the Windsor. Paul talked to me so I wouldn’t spill the dirty details to his wife.”

“Kid, does your mother know what you do for a living?”

“She not only knows, she writes my paycheck—when I get a paycheck.”

“Weiner’s protection detail in Willoughby told us that he caught a train into the city this morning. One of my men shadowed him from Grand Central straight to the Windsor. He told me Weiner was hiking the Appalachian Trail with a working girl. What he didn’t tell me was that
you
went up to Weiner’s room. How is it that he didn’t make you?”

“No one ever makes me. I totally disappear in public—unlike your man. Tall with receding black hair, am I right?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” he said grudgingly. “So what did Weiner tell you?”

“That a client of his named Frankie Donahue arranged the adoption. Donahue was a permit expeditor.”

“You say he ‘was.’ Does that mean?…”

“Yeah, he’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”

Legs nodded. “Or getting dead. Keep talking.”

“The Weiners hadn’t been able to conceive. They were getting nowhere through the conventional adoption route and they were desperate. Paul mentioned it to Donahue one day. Donahue told him he might be able to help them out.”

“Meaning that permits weren’t the only thing this dude expedited.”

“Hey, a fixer’s a fixer. They got a call from him on a Sunday morning in May. May the fifth, to be exact. He sent them to an address on East 39th Street. Donahue was there to meet them along with Peter Seymour, who Paul said acted like a real dick.”

“Hey, a dick’s a dick,” Legs said.

“A doctor and nurse were there, too. Both really tan. Paul said the doctor was in his fifties. That would be Sykes. And the nurse was maybe thirty—Martine Price. The baby boy was in a crib in one of the bedrooms. They were offered the boy
and
a check for fifty thou for ‘transitional expenses,’ courtesy of the Aurora Group, which is the same shell company that Seymour used to pay us. The doctor assured the Weiners that the baby was completely healthy and normal. Which Paul said he appeared to be—aside from one small discrepancy.”

“What discrepancy?”

“According to the baby’s Nevis birth certificate—and contrary to what Seymour told us there
was
a Nevis birth certificate—he’d been born to a Jane Jones on January 25, 1990. That jibes with what Mrs. Kidd said, right?”

Legs nodded. “Right.…”

“And it means the baby would have been three and a half months old when Paul and Laurie took possession of him on May the fifth.”

“He wasn’t?”

“Two weeks old is more like it. Paul said Laurie was positive of it. Bruce was born at the end of April, not January.”

“Hmm, interesting. But where the hell does that take us?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. The Weiners wondered about it, but they wanted a baby. And for fifty thou they didn’t ask.”

“No questions, no details. Sure, I get it. And Martine Price was killed because she knew some of those details. We had no idea she was out there but the people who are behind this sure did.” He glanced over at me. “That’s good work, little bud. Not too late for you to take the test, you know. You’d make a hell of a cop. Pay’s steady. Health and pension benefits are off the chart. And you’d have me for a rabbi. How cool is that?”

“That was my dad’s life. It’s not for me. And I still don’t get something. We’re dealing with a total pro here. Yet he used the same gun three weeks ago in Queens, two nights ago at Candlewood Lake and again last night when he shot at me. What kind of a pro does that?”

“A pro,” he growled, “who’s been told he doesn’t have to worry about my investigation.”

“The commissioner didn’t talk like a man who’s looking to shut you down.”

“The commissioner talked a lot. Who knows how much of it he meant. I don’t. I just know that he needs somebody’s head on a platter for the Charles Willingham shooting. And it’s
not
going to be mine.”

“There’s something else I don’t get. Why didn’t he kill me last night? He could have taken me out. Same as he could have taken me out at Candlewood Lake. Why am I still mucking around in the middle of this? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not to worry, it will. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But we’ll get there.”

“I sure wish I had my iPod on me right now.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’d really like to listen to some Ethel Merman. Ethel’s a huge help to me when I’m searching for clarity.”

“Okay, I take back what I just said. You wouldn’t last one week at the academy.”

“Legs, why are we driving to Ronkonkoma to see a woman named Judith Heintz?”

“She’s Martine Price’s sister. Told me she wouldn’t mind talking about her. Sounded eager to, in fact.”

“What’s her story?”

“She works a cash register at Waldbaum’s. Her husband, Steve, drives for UPS. Plain, honest, working folk. Two kids, ages thirteen and sixteen.” He glanced over at me. “She’s going to think you’re my sergeant. No need to set her straight, okay?”

“Sure thing, Loo.”

Ronkonkoma is a decaying middle-class bedroom community set dead center in the decaying heart of Long Island—which isn’t to be confused with somewhere near the water that’s nice like the Hamptons or the North Shore. The Heintz family lived in a drab little raised ranch on a street of drab little raised ranches. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a raised ranch that wasn’t drab. And I ought to know. I grew up in one. There wasn’t much snow cover on the ground out there. Just a light dusting on the bare, brown lawns. The street was clear and dry. A Dodge Ram pickup and a Toyota Camry were parked in the Heintz’s driveway.

Legs kept on going past their house, circled around the block and came back. Making sure we hadn’t brought a tail with us. We hadn’t.

Judith Heintz opened the front door before we rang the bell. She must have been watching for us out the front window. “Come in, come in, please,” she urged us breathlessly. Her voice was unexpectedly fluty for such a large, fleshy woman. I got the impression that she’d recently lost a lot of weight. She still moved like someone who was circus fat, tottering from side to side as she led us into the entry hall. And the skin hung loose from her jowls and neck like rubbery dewlaps. Her graying hair was cut short. She wore loose fitting navy blue sweat pants and a matching sweatshirt that had several moist-looking tissues stuffed into its wristbands.

The house was small and cluttered. A television blared from the living room, where the ceiling seemed unusually low to me. Maybe because there was so damned much homey, crafty shit crammed in there. Framed macaroni art hanging from the walls, macramé planters from the windows. Everywhere I looked I saw samplers, quilts, coverlets, stuffed animals.

Judith’s lanky, balding husband, Steve, was stretched out on the sofa watching
WWE Raw
. He did acknowledge that Legs and I were standing there in his home. Sort of nodded our way. But he refused to take his eyes off of his steroid freak show. Talking to the police again was strictly Judith’s thing, not his.

She led us into the kitchen and the three of us sat around a dinette set. It was the land of knit cozies in there. The toaster had one. The coffee maker had one. The salt and pepper shakers. The paper napkin holder. You name it and it had its own cozy.

“I was pleased to hear from you, Lieutenant,” Judith said as she settled into her chair. “I hope you fellows will forgive me in advance but I’m still in mourning for my Marty and I can’t seem to talk about her without … I-I just keep on…” She broke off as her tears began to flow. “Poor Steve’s had it up to here with me. But I just miss her so much. She was my big sister and I’ve never been without her. I feel s-so
lost
.” She yanked one of those damp tissues from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. “Excuse me for asking, but what happened to Detective Wood?”

“We’ve taken over the case,” Legs explained.

“And have you caught Marty’s killer? Because you were a little vague on the phone. Gosh, please forgive my manners. Can I get you fellows some coffee or a soda?”

We both told her we were fine.

“What we have is a new angle,” Legs informed her. “This may sound strange, but an entirely different motive for Martine’s death has emerged in the past few hours. We no longer think it was a routine break-in.”

She blinked at him in surprise. “You don’t?”

“No, ma’am. The gun that her killer used was also used in the murder of a young man in Connecticut two nights ago. We believe the two deaths are connected. We believe your sister’s death has something to do with an adoption that took place about twenty years ago, back when she was in the employ of a Dr. John Sykes.”

Judith’s face darkened. “Oh,
him
…”

Legs leaned across the table toward her. “You knew Dr. Sykes?”

“Only to spit at,” she answered viciously. “I tried not to judge Marty and her beloved Dr. John, even though it was just so wrong. He was another woman’s husband. A married man with three children. I told her he would never leave them for her. I told her and I told her. But Marty didn’t care.”

“She and Dr. Sykes were lovers?” I asked.

“Dr. John was the great love of her life, Sergeant. It was because of him that she never married and had babies of her own. Who knows if he felt that way about her. At first, I figured he was just, you know, using her for the sex. She was young and awful pretty. But it was no casual fling, I can tell you that much.”

“They were together for a long time?”

She nodded. “Years and years. Their romance, if you want to call it that, started when they were in the Caribbean on an island called Nevis. I’d never heard of the place until she went down there. Dr. John had to take care of a rich patient there for several weeks. He asked Marty to join him. This was … must be twenty years ago, like you just said, Lieutenant. I still have the photos and letters she sent me. I was just looking through them the other day.” She got up, tottered to the front hall and came back with a shoebox filled with snapshots and envelopes. She searched through the pictures and put one on the table for us to look at. “Here’s my Marty. Wasn’t she pretty?”

Martine Price was frolicking on a beach. She was big boned and on the horsy side. Not my idea of pretty. But she was certainly shapely in her one-piece bathing suit.

Judith showed us another snapshot. “And this here’s her Dr. John.”

John Sykes was sandy haired and considerably older than Martine, although he looked plenty fit in his swim trunks. He had a kindly face. He seemed happy.