Burn (Michael Bennett 7) (15 page)

“What do you think?” I said. “I said I don’t know you from Adam and get the hell out of my house. I mean, these people are off base here, right? I went through Chrissy’s file. All the
t
’s are crossed and the
i
’s are dotted on the adoption contract. We’re good, right?”

“Let me ask you something,” Gunny said after another thoughtful pause. “Do you think the guy could have been her biological father?”

“Well, actually, yeah,” I said. “He’s blond and he does look like her. Does it matter? This guy doesn’t have a claim for custody here, does he? I mean, coming here after all this time, for heaven’s sake?”

“Well,” Gunny said. “Probably not, probably not.”

“Probably? What do you mean, Gunny? Help me here. Please, I’m going nuts.”

“Adoption disputes by birth parents after the fact are usually thrown out, Mike,” he said. “But there have been a few very special instances in which the birth parents have won custody. Do you remember the Baby Jessica and Baby Richard cases from the nineties?”

“No,” I said. “Refresh my memory.”

“Well, in both cases, custody motions were filed by biological fathers who claimed they had never been made aware of the adoption. That’s why back when you and Maeve adopted Chrissy, I wasn’t pleased that we never received information about Chrissy’s birth father. Getting the birth father to sign away his rights is the first thing that needs to get done—so that a situation just like this can never come up.”

I closed my eyes.

“So you’re saying, worst-case scenario, this guy might have a claim?”

“Unlikely, but I won’t lie, Mike. It’s possible.”

“How did the Baby Jessica and Baby Richard cases turn out?”

“In each case, the birth father won, Mike,” he said quietly. “The children were taken away from the adoptive families.”

CHAPTER
46

AMONG A CLATTER OF
plates and some amped-up Irish music, Alberto Witherspoon sat in the restaurant part of O’Lunney’s among the Times Square tourists, watching the cops at the bar.

When he’d heard the joint’s name from their contact, he’d thought it would be some Hell’s Kitchen old man bar, but it was actually very nice, clean lines and bright, shining wood and jazzy sconces and chandeliers. And the food was terrific. Even though it was well past noon, he’d ordered the all-day Traditional Irish Breakfast of bangers, rashers, baked beans, eggs, grilled tomato, and black and white puddings. He poured some HP Sauce, this bottled brown Irish ketchup stuff that was on the table, all over his black pudding and took a bite.

Amazing. Just what the doctor ordered. He must have been Irish in another life.

It was too bad he wasn’t there to give a Yelp review.

Overall, it looked good for them, he thought. He’d already been to the cop’s burial. It had been a pitiful turnout, really. No family to speak of and only a few cops. Definitely not the tear-jerking lines of cops you’d see if they thought the female cop had been shot in the line of duty. He’d thought maybe more NYPD would show up at the after-gathering, but again, pathetic. Naomi Chast had been one big fat zero as a human being.

Which was ironic, considering the struggle the little bitch had put up when he jumped her with the chloroform in the Lenox Avenue house. She’d bitten him in the hand and kneed him pretty good in the family jewels. When she’d finally gone out, he had taken her gun and waited for her partner, cursing himself for not locking the gate from the inside while he cleaned up. But after another couple of minutes, he’d realized there was no partner, no backup.

The suicide idea had been the boss’s call after Alberto had read him the personnel file they had gotten from their guy in the mayor’s office. The copette was half a wing nut, apparently, already unstable. All it took when he finally got her back to her apartment at 3 a.m. that morning was to forcibly sit her tight little ass down at her desk, hand in hand with her service weapon, and give her a little push.

He was going over that memory again and again, sipping the last of his Irish coffee, when his Galaxy smart-phone jingled.

And?
was the text from the boss.

Alberto looked back over at the bar, at five measly cops gathered together to mourn the loss of Naomi Chast. Two of them were watching last night’s Yankees game while another one looked like he was playing Angry Birds on his phone. They looked bored.

Long live the memory of Naomi Chast. Or maybe not.

We’re good to go
, Alberto leisurely texted back.

A guy bumped into him in the joint’s front vestibule as he was leaving, brown-haired white guy, tall, decent shoulders, forty or so.

“Jeez, sorry, buddy. Didn’t see you there,” the guy said affably, patting him on the shoulder.

It was one of Naomi’s cop buddies from the burial, Alberto realized. He reminded Alberto of an armored-car guard he had smoked in San Francisco in the early ’90s. The same deep, almost royal-blue eyes and Dudley Do-Right look on his pale, chiseled face. Alberto hated cops. It would be a pleasure to send this one to the great beyond, too.

PART THREE

BACK ON THE BEAT

CHAPTER
47

A MESSAGE TO CALL
Chief of Detectives Ray Starkie was on my cluttered desk when I came in on Monday morning. I decided to answer it. Reluctantly.

“Bennett here,” I said.

“I want you in my office today at ten,” Starkie said, none too happy sounding. “You got it? Ten a.m. My office. This is not a request.”

“What’s this about?” I said. “Am I going to need a union rep? What the hell is it about?”

“Ten a.m.”

I decided to take Doyle downtown with me. If I was going to be ambushed or reprimanded by Starkie on some trumped-up garbage, I figured at least I’d have a witness along.

But there was a surprise waiting for me when I got off the elevator on Headquarters’ dreaded tenth floor. A good one, for a change. I smiled.
Every dog really does have its day, after all
, I thought as I came down the corridor.

Beside Starkie’s office door, in a conference room, I spotted Starkie with a small crowd of people sitting at a table. I was smiling because of some of the friendly faces I’d spotted in the crowd. One of them was my old boss, Miriam Schwartz, who gave me a wink. And another one was the police commissioner, Ricky Filkins.

I really was overjoyed to see Filkins. We went way back. The short, pugnacious, legendary cop had been my first precinct commander when I was a rookie in the early ’90s. The ex-marine lieutenant and Vietnam vet was a cop’s cop, tough and demanding but fair. He, too, had a huge family—seven kids. We’d tipped back more than a few together in Upper East Side bars on St. Paddy’s Days over the years.

I’m usually not one for kissing butt and taking advantage of the whole friends-in-high-places thing, but in this case, with Starkie gunning to make my work life a living hell, I quickly decided to make an exception.

I walked around the table and greeted the commissioner warmly.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” the square-jawed, flattopped Filkins said, smiling widely as he gripped my hand like a vise. “Heard you did good things out in California, Mike. Making the department look good even in exile, huh?”

“Ah, you’re making me blush, boss,” I said. “It was nothing. I mean, somebody had to show the feds what to do, right?”

“Who’s this?” Filkins said, gesturing behind me to Doyle, who looked like I’d just transported him to the top of Mount Olympus.

“This is my partner from the ombudsman squad, Jimmy Doyle.”

“The ombudsman squad. Yeah, I heard about your new assignment,” Filkins said, glancing across the glossy table at Starkie, who had taken the opportunity to thumb at an imaginary spot on his tie.

“You must be an impressive young investigator, son,” Filkins said as Doyle shook his hand. “I know Mike Bennett, and I know he doesn’t truck with any dead weight.”

“I, uh, try, sir,” Doyle managed to spit out.

“Well, sit, gentlemen, please,” Filkins said, offering us the seats on his right. “Unfortunately, Mike, we’re going to be reassigning you again,” the commissioner said after we were settled. “That’s the reason I had Chief Starkie call you in. Something’s come up, a real pain in my ass that I need you on.”

Miriam cleared her throat.

“You’re going to be loaned back to Major Crimes, Mike. Starting now,” she said.

“Major Crimes?” I said, taking the opportunity to turn and look at Starkie.

There have been many times in my life when I’ve been overcome with the irresistibly joyful urge to give somebody the finger. But getting to watch Starkie sit meekly in his seat like a neutered dog as I sat there smiling at him was an even more exquisite pleasure.

“Miriam will fill you in on the deets. We need you ramped up to speed pronto, Mike. What do you say? You want your old desk back?”

“You know me, Commissioner,” I said as I smiled again at Starkie. “I’m always here to do whatever the department needs me to do.”

CHAPTER
48

AFTER THAT UNEXPECTEDLY AWESOME
departmental meeting, I shook the commish’s hand one last time and quickly headed with Doyle and Miriam Schwartz out of Starkie’s office for the Major Crimes Division’s new digs down on the fifth floor.

“Miriam, I love you,” I said as I briefly embraced my loyal lady boss in the elevator. “I’m not kidding. Call your husband, Daniel, and tell him you’re sorry but your thirty years plus together just isn’t going to cut it. You’ve found another man.”

“Yeah, well, you
should
love me, Mike,” the stylish, affable, silver-haired sixty-year-old said, smiling, as she stiff-armed me away. “Favors don’t come cheap when that shark Starkie is involved, believe me.”

“You’ve been working behind the scenes, haggling on my behalf the whole time, haven’t you?” I said. “And here I thought all rabbis had to be men.”

“Can the blarney charm cease forthwith before I change my mind, would you please, Mike?” she said with a laugh. “This is going to cost you more than words, words, words. I want dinner, and not potluck back at that Upper West Side shoe you live in with all those kids, either. I’m thinking you need to help me brush up on my French after what I just pulled. You know, words like
Per Se
or
Jean-Georges?
”

Major Crimes’ office space was brand-new. Fresh white paint on the walls, glass-partitioned offices. In all the cubicles were new computers and sleek blond-wood desks and even those futuristic ergonomic chairs. I couldn’t wait to park my butt in one and get to work.

We went into Miriam’s glass fishbowl office and I sat on a leather couch next to Doyle. The full-length window by my elbow had a spectacularly dramatic view of the low neon sprawl of Chinatown. I smiled down at the familiar vista as Miriam lifted a fat file off a conference table in the corner and came back.

“Catch,” she said as she dropped it in my lap.

There were photos in the folder. The first one showed the inside of a small store. By its front door was a horseshoe of glass-and-wood display cases, each and every one of them smashed to smithereens. Shattered bits of glass carpeted the floor next to an overturned advertising sign that had sparkling diamond earrings over a caption that said,
How Badly Do You Want to Play Golf This Weekend?

“I see,” I said, sitting up. “So this is about that jewelry heist out in Brooklyn?”

“Did you see that act of deduction, Officer Doyle?” Miriam said. “Observe closely, young man, and maybe one day you, too, will make detective first grade.”

CHAPTER
49

“YES, MIKE, IT’S ABOUT
the jewelry heist,” Miriam continued, “except you got the noun form wrong. It’s not jewelry store heist singular. It’s jewelry store heists plural.”

“How many have there been?” I said, shuffling through the photos.

“Four, we think. But it could be as many as seven. We looked at the usual suspects, Mob crews and high-end-robbery guys who might have gotten out of prison recently, but no go. These guys are new, and they’re fast. They got in and out in about three minutes. We got there in five, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of them.”

“But what’s the major problem?” I said, showing her the shot of the trashed store. “I mean, this is bad and all, but this store isn’t exactly Tiffany’s, is it? Aren’t these people just a bunch of smash-and-grabbers?”

“We think smashing the cases was a front. What we left out of the paper was that in the back of the store at the time of the robbery was the owner’s brother-in-law, a clerk from a ritzy Madison Avenue designer-jewelry shop who’d stopped in to get some pieces reset. The thieves put a gun to his head and walked out with a briefcase with almost a million in diamonds and black pearls.”

“Not bad for three minutes’ work,” Doyle said.

“If you can get it,” I said.

“Oh, they get it, Mike. And they’re damn good, too. In the last six months, they hit two places out in Jersey and one in Greenwich, Connecticut.”

“How do you know they’re the same people?”

“The same way you know it’s Mozart playing on the radio,” she said. “The excellence in execution. These guys are real craftsmen. In Connecticut, they bypassed alarms and actually busted a safe after they defeated motion and light detectors and a fifty-thousand-dollar glass security door. And we have no leads. The commissioner is under enormous pressure with the upcoming Midtown diamond show. Merchants are coming in from all over the world, France, Russia, Antwerp.”

“Not exactly the best time to have a crew of mysterious, highly professional jewel thieves picking up steam, is it?” Doyle said.

“No, it isn’t,” Miriam agreed.

“And I’m supposed to catch them, huh?” I said, piecing through the evidence. “Mike Bennett to the rescue?”