Cold Hit (42 page)

Wrenley stood still, not knowing whether to believe me or not. With the gun held against me, he lifted the glasses off my nose and placed them on himself. Now I blinked as I tried to avoid the direct glare. “Why should I think that’s true? Have you seen the trucks unloading out front for the Dia exhibit? Not even a police car could get through that block.”

“There are two men in plain clothes standing at the entrance of the gallery,” I lied, “and a patrol car with two others out in back. You have yourself to thank for that. It all started after your efforts to kill me the first time, didn’t it? There have been bodyguards taking me everywhere since your attempts on my life.”

I remembered the day I had met Chapman and Wallace here to interview Bryan Daughtry. We had interrupted his meeting with Wrenley. My Jeep had been parked directly in front of the gallery, with my identification plate in the windshield. It was he who must have had me followed from Twenty-second Street to the garage at Lincoln Center. He’d had plenty of time to alert Bailor to try to run me down that night, after the ballet. Wrenley must have thought I’d known more than I did. Maybe he had relied on Mickey Diamond’s made-up headline.

He was considering his options. “I can offer you a livelier proposition, then. You’re going to be my passport out of town.”

Anything that would get me away from this unlikely mausoleum. “What do you mean?”

“Take me downstairs with you and have them drive us wherever I decide to go.”

My panic heightened at the thought of putting another police officer within range of a man with a loaded gun, of exposing Brannigan and Lazarro to this murderous thief. “That might not work,” I said. “If they don’t know you, they won’t fall for that.”

“It can’t be your friend Chapman down there, can it? He just called you from somewhere else. So it must be some uniformed cops who pulled this duty. I’m sure they don’t know you and all your colleagues, do they?”

I couldn’t figure where he was going with this, so I gave an honest answer instead of trying to outguess him. “They’re precinct cops. They don’t know me well.”

“And tell me how well
you
know Charlie Rosenberg?”

My head was spinning. I couldn’t follow him. The name sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t think of who or what he meant. “Who?”

He reached into his left pants pocket and pulled out the gray security badge issued by my office, which dangled from a silver-colored metal chain. With one hand, Wrenley slipped it over his head and let it hang around his neck, like I wear mine at the office. Now it clicked. Charlie was a young assistant who worked in one of the trial bureaus. Like McKinney, he was a morning jogger.

“I picked this up at the front desk today when I came down to your office to see you. Tsk, tsk, tsk — they ought to be much more careful with those I.D. tags when you people leave them lying around. I actually had other plans for this, in case we needed to get past the doormen at your apartment building. But it will do fine for you to introduce me to your bodyguards. You can say I was here working on the case when you arrived. Charlie Rosenberg. Shit, some of my best friends are Jewish.”

“But the photograph—”

“Can’t even make it out with all the use the badge has had — dark hair, pleasant smile. I’ll pass.”

I thought of the morning two weeks ago, right after Deni’s body had been found, when Mike and I came back from Compstat and McKinney’s tag had been mislaid in the pile at the front desk. I was so pleased at the time that he had trouble getting back into the building that I hadn’t raised a stink about the lax security.

Wrenley poked me again. “Where’s your tag? Put it on.”

“It’s in my bag.”

With his free hand he reached inside my oversized tote, never taking his eyes off me. It was hopeless that he’d find anything in it. He gave out a quick laugh. “I guess Chapman gave you away. Since he told me there’s no gun in your bag, why don’t you get the I.D. badge out yourself? And leave the sharp pencils inside there.”

I set the bag on the floor and knelt down, riffling through it to feel for the chain and pull it out. It snagged on something and I grabbed at it. Now I could feel the plastic bag in which I had placed the toilet articles for Mercer. I pulled up the small plastic razor blade case and palmed it, bringing the chain and gray tag with my name on it out of the handbag. Still crouching, I hung the chain around my neck and pocketed the slim blade holder as I reached my hand to the floor to stand up again.

Wrenley jabbed at me to move toward the staircase. We were closer to it than to the lift in the far corner. There was no point making a dash to the elevator with a gun at my back. “Down the steps, Ms. Cooper. Let’s try the back door, where you say the car is waiting.”

I descended the stairs slowly, my hand shaking as I tried to grip the banister. We had gone from the fifth level to the fourth. I turned on the landing and went down to the third floor, where the old Hi-Line tracks ran through the length of the building.

“Hold it right there,” he said sharply, drawing up by my side as I reached the bottom step. He rested a foot on top of the nearest railroad tie. “You’ve got to get this quivering under control, Alex. It’s Alex, isn’t it? These cops have to think we’re partners, too, don’t they?”

Wrenley didn’t realize Battaglia was running the Children’s Crusade. Most of my colleagues were kids right out of law school, staying in public service only as long as they could resist the lure of the high-paying private sector. Someone Wrenley’s age would be an executive or supervisor, and not likely to be out in the field working cases or taking orders from me. Even if I could calm myself down, Brannigan was bright enough to know that something was wrong with this picture. I would put us all in grave danger.

He lowered his right arm, his gun to his side but still visible. “Never send a rapist to do a man’s job.”

“What?” I asked.

“Deni wasn’t supposed to be murdered. Maybe I can make you more comfortable if you understand that I’m not a killer. Well, I didn’t set out to be one. You just need to get me safe passage out of here, and then I’ll simply disappear, leaving you unharmed. But we can’t go anywhere until you settle down and stop shaking so badly.”

I didn’t believe him for a moment, but it was clear that he wasn’t letting me move until he saw my tremors subside. “Tell me what you mean. If you want me to stop shivering, explain to me why Deni had to die.”

“Two words: Anthony Bailor.” Wrenley braced his back against the banister.

“You knew him in Florida?”

“Much to my father’s regret. Wrong side of the tracks and all that. I met Anthony during my brief stay in a juvenile home, back when I was a delinquent. A quaint term you don’t hear much of these days, do you, Alex?”

I was certain we had run a rap sheet on Wrenley and it had come up clean.

“You look puzzled. I was fifteen at the time. My father’s lawyer was good. Had the case sealed because of my age. Knew enough to get the fingerprints and photos back. Most of them are too lazy to follow through on that, as you probably know. But then, it wasn’t all bad. After I met Anthony I never had to do second-story work again.

“I’ve had an eye for nice things all my life. Couldn’t always afford them. But I was able to get myself invited into the right homes for cocktails and dinner. Called Anthony a week or two later, gave him the layout and a schedule, arranged myself an alibi for the time of the burglary, and I built myself up a very nice little collection of antiques. The Keys were a bit confining for me, so we eventually set up shop further north. By the time Anthony got sent away big-time, I was flourishing in Palm Beach. The old ladies loved me.”

“The Gardner heist. You—”

“Don’t be stupid. I’d never have dared an operation like that one. Besides, Anthony was tucked away in prison ten years ago.”

“But he did the theft from the museum at Amherst. That’s what he went to jail for in New York.”

“Exactly. One of the guys responsible for the Gardner masterminded the break-in at the Mead. Anthony took the weight for him when he got caught with some of the art.”

“But never gave him up?”

“He’s good at that. I’ll bet your man Chapman is having a hard time.”

“And Denise Caxton?”

“I’m sure you know by now that Anthony and Omar spent some time together in jail. Omar had that lame brained scam of writing threatening letters to wealthy divorcées. He began to brag about it to Anthony. Told him about the Caxtons and their art connections. Bailor got in touch with me. I knew Deni and Lowell — everyone in the business knew them. We used Omar to stay close to Deni.”

“Did she really hire him to kill Lowell?”

“She didn’t want her husband dead. She just wanted him frightened a bit.”

I’d say a bullet creasing his skull could do the trick. “Omar shot him?”

“No, he subcontracted that out to Anthony. Far more capable with a gun. You’re doing much better, Alex. You’re almost ready to go.” He was watching my hands, which I had clasped together to keep from shaking as much.

“But the paintings from the Gardner, this all has to do with them, doesn’t it?”

Wrenley paused.

“I know you showed one of them to Marco Varelli.”

He looked me in the eye to see whether I was just testing him.

“Those paintings have been out of circulation for almost ten years, since the date of the theft. Everyone knows, Alex — well, everyone in
my circle
— that the thieves have had trouble unloading them. Some of the minor things have sold, of course—”

“But not the Rembrandt or the Vermeer.”

“So Anthony was asked to get in touch with me long before he met Omar.”

“By the thieves?”

“I prefer to call them the custodians. I have no idea who the Philistines were who actually broke into the building. Couldn’t have been art lovers — I think they left the most valuable painting behind, in their ignorance.”

Titian’s
Rape of Europa
, wall-sized and worth even more than the Rembrandt and the Vermeer.

“I’d been trying to find a way to sell them, collect a broker’s fee. I had heard about Lowell’s fantastic private collection, and I knew Deni was supposed to be a bit of a wild card. They were still together at the time, of course. I thought I might interest her in buying one of the great pieces for their own collection. Discretion advised. It happens more often than you’d think with stolen art.”

“And you called her shortly before she was supposed to travel to England with Lowell. That’s why she didn’t go on that trip with him, isn’t it?” Sooner or later our subpoenaed phone records would show the incoming call to Deni from Frank Wrenley. If only those records had arrived before now.

“She was wild with excitement when I told her about the paintings. Funny thing is, she wanted to buy them for Lowell. It was to be the greatest coup of her life, to give him something he didn’t have and couldn’t have found anywhere else in the world. She sent him on ahead to England with the best intentions.”

“And she took the Vermeer to Marco Varelli, to make sure it was the original?” I asked. I thought of our conversation with Don Cannon, who had witnessed the meeting.

“I never expected to become personally involved with Mrs. Caxton. That wasn’t part of the grand design. But it was icing on the cake. She developed a serious case of cold feet once Varelli threw his tantrum, so she decided to catch up with Lowell in Bath. She’d been planning the surprise of a lifetime for him, and he’s in bed with the young English girl. Drove Deni right back home, into my waiting arms.”

“You convinced her to keep playing with the paintings, even though she knew they were stolen?”

“Let’s say it was the free spirit in her. Once she and Lowell decided to split, she became more carnivorous, more worried about how she could maintain the lifestyle to which she’d become accustomed. Every now and then she’d get a little crazy on me. You know about the reward?”

“Five million dollars tax-free from the Feds, for the return of the art.”

“Deni would occasionally try to convince me to turn in the paintings, in exchange for immunity from prosecution for possession of stolen property. Take the five million and run off with her — well, I can’t tell you where, exactly. I’m still hoping to be there by tomorrow. Beyond your jurisdiction, Miss D.A. And no extradition policy, either.”

“But the other man she was dating? Preston Mattox.”

“Why is it women like you always enjoy a sad love story? I did have some competition. Deni wasn’t quite ready to make a commitment after what happened with Lowell. Her selfconfidence had skyrocketed after our first few months together.”

The story was becoming clearer all the time. I stretched out the fingers of both hands, to see whether they trembled. Wrenley watched me. “Very good, Alex. Getting better.”

I balled them into fists and looked back at Wrenley. “Then why was she killed? She had the paintings, didn’t she? You were afraid you’d lose everything if she walked away from you?”

“Correction. One painting. We were going to be partners, so I let her hold on to the Vermeer. Less valuable than the Rembrandt, but she loved that domestic little scene. I favored the seascape.

“I called to tell her I thought she was right. That we ought to return the paintings to the museum and collect the reward. Her name wouldn’t be connected to the scandal, and I’d give her half the proceeds. We had been doing other deals together, so it made perfect business sense. To prove my bona fides, I offered to take her to lunch so she could give me the painting — wrapped up, of course — at Jean-Georges. In public. Neat and clean. She could carry it to the table in a Bergdorf shopping bag and just pass it to me with a peck on the cheek. A check would eventually follow for two and a half million.”

“But you must have concocted a way to get all five million?”

“Well, minus a slight commission for Anthony.”

“Did you know where she kept the painting?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t have had to offer her a two-hundred-dollar lunch, would I? Anthony was to follow Deni from home. He had borrowed Omar’s station wagon. He was to abduct Deni, drive her to a fairly remote spot, and steal her purse and whatever else was in the car. He knew he was after a painting, but the painting was supposed to look incidental to the usual money, jewelry, fancy-car theft.”