Rizzo’s Fire (35 page)

“Yeah,” Rizzo said, nodding. “I saw those movies.”

Bradley looked at Rizzo, his lips pursing. He shook his head. “I fear the death of Avery Mallard is a tragedy unfathomable by the superficial fabric of your rather sad American culture, Sergeant,” he said. “Now, if it had been some bubbleheaded blonde pop singer in between rehabilitations,
that
would be considered a true American tragedy, I’ve no doubt.” He shook his head once more. “That would be something you people could take to heart.”

Rizzo laughed. “You know, it amazes me how many foreigners I run into bitchin’ about the U.S.” He allowed a moment to pass, then continued. “Makes a guy wonder, how come they’re over here bitchin’? Why didn’t they just stay the fuck home, where everything was so perfect?”

With growing anger, Bradley responded. “Once again, Sergeant, get to your business. My appointment cannot be delayed.”

“Okay, relax,” Rizzo said. “Here we go: Kellerman ever mention a guy named Robert Lauria to you? A shoe salesman from Brooklyn?”

Bradley shook his head, his face now without expression. “No,” he said.

Rizzo smiled. “Just like that? ‘No’? You don’t even have to think about it?”

“No, Sergeant. I do not have to think about it. Sam never mentioned
any
shoe salesman to me. From anywhere.”

“Maybe in some other context, some other reference? Robert Lauria.” Rizzo spelled the last name.

“No. Never.”

“Okay,” Rizzo said, as he wrote in his pad.

“What’s the connection between Sam Kellerman and this murdered shoe salesman, Sergeant?” Bradley asked.

Rizzo looked up from his note pad. “Oh, that’s kinda confidential, Mr. Bradley,” he said lightly. “You know, like what ever you got goin’ with your lieutenant, that guy Lombardi.” He paused. “And did I say Lauria was the murder victim? I don’t remember saying that.” He shrugged. “Guess you’re assumin’ again. Only this time . . . you happen to be right.”

Bradley did not respond.

“I understand you helped Mallard out with writing that play,” Rizzo said. “That
Atlanta
thing.”

“Your understanding being based on what information exactly, Sergeant?”

“Oh, I dunno. Something Kellerman said, I think.”

Priscilla interjected. “It had something to do with the plot.”

“I assure you, Officers, my only assistance with the script was in allowing Avery to utilize my cottage at Southampton while he crafted the play.” He smiled coldly at Rizzo, then Jackson. “If I were capable of contributing to so majestic a work, I daresay I would author one myself.”

“Where were you on October thirtieth?” Rizzo asked.

Bradley again looked from one to the other, settling his gaze on Rizzo. “Pardon?”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said offhandedly. “That’s when Lauria was probably killed, or maybe the twenty-ninth. Just a routine question, you know. I gotta ask it. For the record.”

Bradley seemed to ponder matters for a moment. “I cannot answer that, Sergeant,” he said coolly. “You’re talking about nearly one month ago. I have no idea where I may have been.”

“See, Cil?” Rizzo said, turning toward Priscilla. “It’s like I said, who knows where they were a month ago? Nobody.” He turned back to Bradley, lowering his voice, again leaning inward. “Kellerman knew where he was right away,” Rizzo said. “Claimed to be in Paris at the time.”

“I see,” Bradley said.

Rizzo nodded. “Yeah, always gets my attention, these instant alibi answers. But you, you weren’t sure. Had no idea where you were. Hell, I got no idea where
I
was those two days, either.”

They sat silently for a moment before Rizzo continued.

“Well, Mr. Bradley, unless you can think a somethin’ you wanna add about Kellerman, I guess we’re done here.”

Again Bradley made a point of looking at his wristwatch. “No, Sergeant. I have nothing further to add.”

Rizzo stood, Jackson following his lead. He reached across the desk, shaking hands with the producer, noting the dryness of the man’s palm.

“Thanks for your time,” he said. “Maybe we’ll stop by after the holiday, next week sometime. Just to have a word with—what’s her name, your assistant?”

“Linda DeMaris,” Bradley said, releasing Rizzo’s hand.

“Yeah. DeMaris.” Rizzo turned to leave. “We can find our own way out, Mr. Bradley,” he said. “No need to get up.”

“Fine,” Bradley said. “Good day to you both.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said on the way out. “And I hope your Lieutenant Lombardi finds Mallard’s killer.”

“Yes,” Bradley said curtly, his eyes dark. “As do I.”

At the door, Rizzo turned once more, remaining silent and making eye contact with Bradley, the gesture designed to prod the man to speak one last time, to impose a sudden and unwanted obligation on Bradley. Awkward seconds ticked by.

“And, Sergeant,” Bradley finally said. “Good luck to you as well, with your Bensonhurst murder.”

Rizzo smiled. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

ON THEIR
way out, Rizzo and Jackson stopped at the reception desk and showed Robert Lauria’s photograph to the young woman there. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never seen him here.”

Afterward, the two detectives bought coffee from a shop in the building’s lobby, then sat in the Impala on Fifth Avenue, drinking and reviewing their notes.

“Bradley’s our killer, Cil,” Rizzo said. “No fuckin’ doubt about it.”

Priscilla frowned. “He sure looks good, Joe, but
no doubt
? How you figure that?”

“Remember his little, ‘In Great Britain we use our specific area, not just the city we live in,’ bullshit?”

“Yeah, he’s from Kingston, not just London. So what?”

Rizzo sipped his coffee. “Point of information,” he said, “for when you’re dealin’ with a cool character like Bradley. And he
was
cool, believe me. His palm was dry as a stone in the desert, even after that completely unexpected dance around DeMaris and Lauria he had with us. See, guys like him, they think one step ahead, they anticipate, form their answers before they speak. They’re not street skells, blurtin’ out what ever bullshit pops into their heads. Not as a rule, anyway. He was one step ahead of my next question for most of the interview. But as we were leavin’, I turned slow and stared at him. He’s calm on the outside, but wound tight inside his chest. He sees me starin’, he figures I’m gonna ask him somethin’ else now, after he thought we were all done. And he can’t imagine what I’m gonna say. So he’s gotta buy himself some more time to think, and he finally
does
just say what pops into his head. Any damn small talk chitchat.”

Priscilla furrowed her brow. A moment passed, then her eyes widened. Rizzo smiled, again sipping his coffee.

“Holy fuck, Joe,” she said softly. “
Bensonhurst
. How did Bradley know Lauria got killed in Bensonhurst?”

“Bingo. The guy didn’t even know we were from Brooklyn till I tole him, let alone Bensonhurst. And we never mentioned the Six-Two, either, not that some limey would know it’s in Bensonhurst anyway. No, Cil, this guy’s a foreigner, probably never been over to Brooklyn before, or if he has, just the trendy neighborhoods like The Heights and Park Slope. When he was plannin’ Lauria’s murder, he’d have resorted to what’s native to him. He’d have checked a map of Brooklyn, maybe Googled Lauria’s address. When he saw it was in Bensonhurst, from habit he mentally converted ‘Brooklyn’ to ‘Bensonhurst.’ Just like ‘London’ to ‘Kingston-on-Thames.’ Then, under the pressure of my parting stare, it slipped out, and he didn’t even realize its significance.”

Priscilla shook her head. “He’s a double murderer,” she said.

“Yeah, that he is,” Rizzo said. “And from the getup he was wearin’ in that photo on the wall, he was some kinda special forces guy, Royal Marines or S.A.S., somethin’ like that. Bet he got plenty a training in strangulation. Piece a cake for Bradley to kill
these
two guys. Neither one of them was a tough guy, that’s for sure.”

Priscilla nodded. “And did you see that suit he was wearing, Joe? Musta set him back a grand, at least. Outta the four of ’em—Kellerman, the director, the neighbor, and Bradley—he’s the most upscale dresser. A guy like him would definitely own a high-priced raincoat.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo agreed. “Like every other well-off London dude.”

“So why’d you piss him off so much, Joe?”

He smiled. “Mostly ’cause I could. He figured me for some nottoo-bright reactionary cop type. I could see it in his smug expression. I didn’t wanna disappoint the prick. Plus, it made it easier for me to switch gears, rattle him, maybe force a slipup.”

“Yeah, let him get all comfortable with that,” she said. “This way, when we shove the arrest warrant down his throat, he’ll never see it coming.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said softly, “but we’re a long way from an arrest warrant, Cil. We got a ton of circumstantial evidence, enough to convince most people Bradley’s our man. But it’s still not worth much in a courtroom. We can’t
prove
anything. Not yet.”

Priscilla countered, “But we throw a fiber match from his raincoat onto that pile of circumstantial, we got a conviction.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “But we need a search warrant to get to the coat. And I can’t see a judge signin’ one. Not based on what we got so far.”

“I disagree,” Priscilla said. “We got a clear track for Lauria’s play to Bradley through DeMaris. We got the Bensonhurst comment, and we got Bradley’s ties, motives, means, and opportunities on both Lauria’s
and
Mallard’s killings.”

“Normally I might take all that to a judge,” Rizzo said. “Take a shot, cut DeMaris a lesser charge. She takes back that alibi, Bradley sinks with Lauria’s
Solitary Vessel
. But we go to a judge with the Mallard tie-in now, we risk losin’ it all to Manhattan South. We need to work it just from the Lauria angle, which is too weak for a warrant. Or we gotta have an open-and-shut slam-dunk against Bradley on
both
homicides.”

“Sounds kinda tough.”

“Yeah, it should. It
is
tough, but I’m thinkin’, what’s Bradley’s next move?”

Priscilla thought for a moment. “He has to warn DeMaris. Or kill her.”

“Exactly. He’s gotta protect himself before we talk to her some time next week, like I told him we’d do. He’s got to make sure she’s prepared to stonewall us. We don’t know how deep she is in all this. We can certainly figure she stole the play from her former job and gave it to Bradley. She knows it’s plagiarized. Then she alibied Bradley for the night of the Mallard killing, so she probably knows, or damn well
should
know, he’s the one killed Mallard. She may not know about the threat Lauria posed, although why would she think Bradley had to kill Mallard unless she also knew Lauria had turned up claimin’ he was ripped off?”

“What ever she does know,” Priscilla said, “she’s up to her freakin’ eyeballs in this whole mess.”

Rizzo sipped at his coffee. “And Bradley has to get her past the interview with us. An interview he figures’ll only focus on Lauria, and maybe Kellerman.”

A worried look came to Priscilla. “I hope we didn’t just sign De-Maris’s death warrant, Joe. If Bradley sees her as the weak link, he might just decide she’s gotta go, too, and right now.”

Rizzo nodded. “Sure. As awkward a position as that would put him in—connecting him to three murders—he might figure it’s better than her bein’ out there with too much information and maybe not enough balls to stand up.”

Priscilla shrugged. “Well, we haven’t even met the woman yet, Joe. Maybe she does have the balls.”

“Could be,” Rizzo said. “Maybe
she’s
the spark plug here, and he’s just the piston. But either way, his best chance of survival might be for her to stop breathin’.”

“So how should we play it?” Priscilla asked, uneasily. “We’re on thin enough ice as it is, sidestepping Manhattan. We get some woman killed, we’re really in deep shit. Maybe now’s the time to bring it in, go to this Lieutenant Lombardi. We lay it all out for him and maybe he cuts us in for a piece of the credit. If we don’t, this DeMaris maybe gets killed.”

“She ain’t exactly the Virgin Mary, Cil. She’s an accomplice to murder. Maybe two murders.” Rizzo hesitated. “Wouldn’t break my heart if she did get whacked, but I see your point. That’s why I figure we keep this on a short leash. We’re off tomorrow, the next day is Thanksgiving. I don’t see Bradley doin’ anything rash. His history shows he’s a careful planner, not a spur-of-the-moment killer, and he needs a new plan—he can’t use that break-in routine again. He’ll warn DeMaris, then assess the risk. If he decides to murder her, it won’t be on Thanksgiving. Even though he’s a limey, and probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the holiday, he’s been here long enough to have someplace he’s gotta be for turkey dinner—some friends or business associates, whoever. And DeMaris, she’s the
goumada—goumada
s hafta spend their holidays single, tellin’ themselves by this time next year, Mr. Dreamboat will have left his wife and filed for divorce. Yeah, next Thanksgiving everything’ll be just peachy. But for this year, it’s back to Momma’s or Aunt Tillie’s or whoever. No, Cil, I figure she’s safe for at least a few days. We’ll go see her on Friday.”

Priscilla compressed her lips. “Seems a little risky to me, Joe. I don’t know.”

“Yeah, well, like my daughter Carol says, anything worthwhile is hard.” He shrugged. “Let’s chance it. It’ll be okay.”

Reluctantly, she agreed. “All right, I guess . . . But Jesus, I can’t see myself getting too much sleep until this is over with. When we do see her, how should we play it?”

“Oh, I got a plan, Cil. I’m gonna let it percolate in my head a couple a days, then we’ll talk about it.”

He drained his coffee container, then tossed it to the floorboard in the rear of the car. He started the engine and smiled at Priscilla.

“We will talk about it, Partner,” he said. “Believe me.”

“Okay,” Priscilla said. “But if DeMaris turns out to be a cool character like Bradley, this could be a tough play.”

Rizzo pulled the car out into traffic. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t worry about it. Chances are, she’ll turn out to be just another self-absorbed yuppie found a way to grab herself a new BMW with her stolen play idea. She probably never figured she was signin’ on for two murders. My money says, we slap her around a little, she caves.”