The Finishing School (39 page)

“No, obviously they didn’t.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want from me,” Albano said irritably. “We got Dan and Bridget still out with the Puerto Ricans searching that area again, on the off chance anybody’s around. But it’s a long shot. Who knows, maybe this joker Pavel’ll start talking and tell us where the kid is.”

“He won’t. He invoked. So he can’t be questioned without a lawyer present.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“Yeah, and when counsel’s appointed in the morning, it’ll be for ex-tradition purposes only. That lawyer’ll just tell him not to talk until he gets transported to New York and gets his real lawyer, which could be
weeks
from now given how slow the Marshals’ airlifts are.”

“This is when I hate the fucking system. A kid’s life is at stake. You’d think we’d be allowed to go in there and beat the crap out of that Russian prick till he gives it up.”

“That’s what separates us from the barbarians, I guess,” Melanie said.

“Look around. Nothing separates us from the barbarians these days, so why stand on ceremony?” Albano popped one of his ever-present Rolaids. “Stay put for a few minutes, wouldja? I’m gonna see if I can raise the supervisor here and get an update.”

“Okay.” Melanie drew a shaggy breath.

Albano patted her arm. “Buck up, kid. The game ain’t perfect, but we gotta keep playing it.”

“You’re right.”

Exhausted, she put her head down on the desk.

Sometime later Ray-Ray Wong shook her shoulder. Melanie lifted her head blearily. A paper clip that had been stuck to her cheek fell to the desktop with a ping.

“Morning, ma’am. The lieutenant asked me to drive you back to the hotel.”

“What? Why? What’s happening?”

“Zero.
Nada
. Everybody in custody invoked, so they can’t be questioned. I’m tasked with returning you to the hotel for some shut-eye and then heading on to assist in the search at El Yunque.”

Melanie sighed and stood up. She had a headache so bad it felt like there was an ice pick stuck in her eye. Insect bites and thorn pricks on her arms and legs stung like hell. Trevor was missing. Carmen was
still
missing. Melanie was beginning to think they were probably both still in New York, dead or alive. And here
she
was in San Juan, at a big fat standstill.

MELANIE WASN’T one to stand still for long. After Ray-Ray dropped her off, she packed her suitcase, checked out, and took a cab to the airport. There was a seat available on a 7:00 A.M. Delta flight that got into JFK before lunch, so she handed over her credit card. Sitting in the airplane waiting to take off, she left a voice mail for Dan telling him where she was going, and why.

About five hours later, she stood in the harsh light of the baggage-claim area at JFK waiting to collect her suitcase. Supposedly a blizzard was on the way, and the woman next to her said the airport was closing in half an hour. So much for the prospect of reinforcements for whatever it was she hoped to accomplish here. The rest of the team would be stranded in San Juan.
Lucky them
. She shivered for fifteen minutes straight standing in the taxi line. On the ride in, New York City did its best impression of hell, with decaying highways, steam rising from enormous fissures in the roads, garbage and graffiti everywhere.

She checked her voice mail from the cab. A message from Detective Frank Leary prompted her to go straight to Noir, Jay Esposito’s club in the Flatiron District. The taxi let her out in front of an industrial-looking brick building on a cramped side street. She hauled her suitcase into the dark nightclub, breathing in cigarettes and stale beer, and found Detective Leary at the bar finishing an interview. When he was done, he escorted her back through the club, past the coat check and restrooms, toward Jay Esposito’s office.

“Apparent suicide. I’m all ready to slap cuffs on the asshole, and he goes and offs himself. Whaddaya gonna do?” Leary shrugged. He was a burly Irishman in his thirties, with a pleasant face and a receding hairline.

“I hate that. You’re just about to arrest somebody and they die. I always feel like I should do the case anyway,” Melanie said.

“Good news is, we think we found the murder weapon from the Deon Green case. Prick used his golf club, you believe that? We got the nine-iron with hair and blood still on it. Sent it to the lab for testing, but it matches up perfect with the bludgeoning MO in the Green case.”

“What makes you think Esposito killed himself?” Melanie asked as they entered the office, which was crowded with cops.

“I got maybe ten, fifteen witnesses saw Esposito come in here alone at eleven-thirty last night. Me and my partner show up around one, find him with a gun in his hand and his brains splattered all over that wall there. M.E. hauled off the body already, but you can see the debris.”

A nauseating amount of chunky tissue and clotted blood adhered to the concrete wall behind Esposito’s desk. Someone had drawn a large circle around it with red Magic Marker.

“I see,” Melanie said, swallowing hard, turning away.

“Found him slumped in the chair. Looks from the trajectory like he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“I have to tell you, Detective, based on what I know about Jay Esposito, he’d never kill himself.”

“Maybe he figured he was going down and he couldn’t stomach the thought of the inside. Some guys can’t,” Leary said.

“Esposito would just hire a big-name lawyer in a two-thousand-dollar suit and try to beat the charges. He wouldn’t go without a fight. I’m sure of it.”

“What are you saying? You think he was murdered and the shooter faked a suicide?”

“Maybe. Who knows?” She paused, thinking about all the evidence that Esposito was being framed by somebody, then said more firmly, “Yes, I do.”

“Got any suspects?”

“Esposito was running a string of heroin mules between San Juan and New York. The suppliers were Colombians. A deal scheduled for last night went south in a big way.”

“That’ll do it. Colombians’ll whack ya as easy as they’ll say hello, and if you fuck with their transactions, forget about it,” Leary said.

“Or it could be somebody else we just haven’t identified yet. Esposito had a lot of enemies. What I’m saying is, I wouldn’t take anything for granted.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not. Crime Scene guys’ve been here for hours already, processing the place just like it was a murder.”

“Have they found anything?”

“They’re still working. So far the only item of interest besides the gun is a key they found, like, hangin’ out of Esposito’s jacket pocket. It was just kind of in a funny position, you know? Half in, half out, not natural. Like maybe somebody went through his pockets looking for something and knocked it out by accident.”

“Hmm. Do we know what the key is for?”

“Yeah, actually, that was weird, too. It had a tag with an address in Williamsburg. Not too often you find a key with the address actually written on it, right?”

“Maybe somebody wanted us to find it.”

“Huh. Interesting thought,” Leary said, looking at Melanie with enhanced respect. “Anyways, I dispatched a squad car a little while ago to check the place out. I’m waiting to hear.”

“I’d like to talk to the Crime Scene detectives.”

“Sure thing. Yo, Butch,” Leary called.

Butch Brennan from the Crime Scene team came over to them.

“Hey, Melanie.”

“Hey, Butch, what’s up?”

“Ms. Vargas here thinks based on the case she’s doing there’s a chance our boy was whacked,” Leary said. “You got anything points to that?”

Butch smiled. “Funny you should mention that. C’mon outside.”

Butch opened a nearly invisible door faced in the same concrete as the wall. “We dusted the doorknob. Pretty interesting in itself. Nothing. Wiped clean,” he said.

They stepped out into a narrow back alley that was covered in a pristine carpet of fresh snow. A horde of pigeons that had been eating from a Dumpster took off with a flapping of wings.

Butch pointed out several faint indentations in the snow in a small area cordoned off with blue police barricades.

“See here? We photographed three footprints around four o’clock this morning. Right, left, right, leading away from the door. Snow’s picked up since then, so they got kinda blurry, but they were real clear when we shot ’em.”

“Could you tell what kind of shoe made them?” Melanie asked.

“I’m gonna say a male. Looks like a sneaker. More specific than that, we need to consult our footprint guy.”

“When were they made?”

“The snow wasn’t crusted or nothing, so they looked pretty fresh. I’d say late last night. But this is the interesting part. Take a look at the left print here.”

Butch knelt down, took a little handheld broom from his pocket, and began dusting at the middle impression. “Don’t worry. We already photographed it and took samples and everything.”

As Butch carefully removed the top layer of fluffy new snow, a small patch of dark purple appeared.

“Blood,” Melanie said.

“Yup. I’m betting it was the victim’s. Lab’ll confirm that. We’re photographing the black floor inside with the infrared to get a better look at any footprints in the blood spatters. There
should
be some. He had to pick the blood up someplace, right?”

“So the shooter stepped in Esposito’s blood when he was leaving and tracked it outside into the alley?” Leary asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Butch replied.

“He’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” Melanie said, nodding enthusiastically. “We’ll get him.”

DETECTIVE LEARY WAS a nice guy. When Melanie couldn’t get a cab in the snow, he left his partner in charge at Noir and drove her back to her office so she wouldn’t have to lug her suitcase on the subway. Melanie loved that about cops. They’d drive you anywhere, at the drop of a hat.

“So you got my little cousin on this case, I understand. Bridget Mulqueen,” Leary said, maneuvering his unmarked sedan expertly down the slick avenue at top speed.

“Oh, right, Bridget’s your cousin. I forgot.”

“How’s she doing?”

Melanie looked out at the falling snow. “You know. She’s doing okay.”

“Yeah, she’s green,” he said with a smile.

“She’s all right. She has the makings of a decent cop,” Melanie said, quoting Dan.

Leary glanced over at her quizzically, like he wondered if she was bullshitting him. “Well, just so you know, the job wasn’t exactly her lifelong dream.”

“No?”

“She was a phenomenal soccer player, Bridget. Did everything you could do with it. You Google her, she still comes up as the top scorer in her division. She wanted to go semipro.”

“So what happened?”

“Her old man was against it. My Uncle Jimmy’s an A-plus guy, but he’s a ballbreaker. I can say that, ’cause I love him to death. Larger than life, Jimmy Mulqueen. Definitely the type who needs somebody to follow in his footsteps. Aunt Beattie didn’t give him no boys. Four girls, he has. Bridget’s the youngest, and he wanted her on the job.”

“Oh. I see.”

“You know how it is with girls and their fathers sometimes.”

“Yes,” Melanie said. “I definitely know that.”

“Bridget’s crazy about her dad. So she came on when maybe it’s not the ideal life for her.”

“That’s a shame.”

They pulled up in front of Melanie’s office building. Leary looked at her with mild, trusting eyes. “Listen, you’d be doing me a big favor if you could watch out for her. She’s a good kid.”

For a second, Melanie wished that she didn’t want the one thing in life that Bridget so obviously wanted, too. But there was nothing she could do about it. With every day that passed, Melanie was more convinced that she and Dan O’Reilly were born for each other. Besides, didn’t
she
need Dan more than Bridget did? Here was Bridget, part of a cozy NYPD family, with this and that relative looking out for her. Bridget could get along without Dan. Melanie wasn’t so sure she could say the same for herself.

“I’ll do my best. Thanks for the ride,” Melanie said, feeling a sharp stab of guilt.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll call ya if we get anything interesting off this Williamsburg warehouse thing. And be careful, okay? Whoever got to Expo’s still out there.”

MELANIE PLOPPED DOWN at her desk with her coat still on and called home. Sandy told her Maya was fine. No fever, no vomiting, sleeping peacefully. So Melanie heaved a sigh of relief and dialed into her voice mail. She still hadn’t bothered to remove her coat, which was a lucky thing, because otherwise she would’ve just had to put it right back on again.

The message was only twenty minutes old.

“
Mel, Stew Steinberg. This is the type of call you
know
I don’t make lightly, but a young Latina woman’s safety is at stake, so I’m considering cooperating a client. I’m sure that comes as a shock to you. Defendant’s name is Juan Carlos Peralta, a hardworking kid from the projects, wrongly accused. He says you were trying to pin those rich-bitch ODs on him. Let me emphasize, Juan Carlos knows
nothing
about the OD case. But he
does
have some information about a girl named Carmen Reyes, who got herself mixed up in some type of embezzlement scheme that may have led to her abduction. He thinks he can help you find her
, if
you’re willing to drop charges. Give a call so we can get over to the MCC and proffer him ASAP
.”

Embezzlement? The more Melanie thought about that one, the more she scratched her head. But who was she to quibble at this point in her investigation? Carmen and Trevor were still missing. Every moment that passed left her feeling more hopeless and desperate about their fates. Jay Esposito, her most promising target, was lost to the silence of the grave. The circumstances of his death further convinced Melanie that somebody else was out there pulling the strings. In short, she was desperate for a fresh lead. Juan Carlos and embezzlement would have to do.

But it was a snowy Friday afternoon. Christmas was Tuesday, so nobody was around, and whoever was, wasn’t doing any work. After several messages the receptionist at Legal Aid finally called back to tell her Stewart had last been sighted heading to the chief judge’s Christmas party. Melanie paged Stewart five times to no avail, then decided to go out looking for him. She wandered around the near-deserted courthouse for a while and dropped in on a few Christmas parties that Stewart had been at but just left. Eventually she found him eating a late lunch at the mob diner. She had to wait for Stewart to finish his meal, walk over to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, wait for the CO on duty to decide to help them, and wait
endlessly
for the guards to bring Juan Carlos Peralta down to the claustrophobically tiny interview room. Hours had passed already. Finally Juan Carlos appeared on the other side of the wire-mesh screen, clad in a bright orange prison jumpsuit, looking none too happy.