First Kill (8 page)

Ambler was a
lifelong
. He had been a friend of my dad’s for decades. He would do anything for me … well, anything within reason. “You’re nobody’s fool, Stephanie. Still, the Bureau has no jurisdiction in international affairs. How would you like me to help? It’s not like I can pick up the phone and call an agent in Ireland.”

“No, but you can check on Hartley.”

I watched Ambler’s face as revelation took form. “You want me to check on Hartley because—”

“Because no one of authority in the New York jurisdiction would dare trifle his memory.”

Ambler smiled. He actually kind of glowed. “You are a devious woman, Stephanie Chalice. You do your old man proud.”

I’ve always believed that you make your own luck, that hard work and perseverance are the keys to success. Then again sometimes hard work counts for nothing, and you get lucky enough to step in a proverbial pile of dog poo. As I sat with Ambler, the precinct security tape continued to roll. Quinlan and Farrell got into their car and drove off. I had gone back into the building to share the news of my Quinlan/Hartley meeting with Sonellio. The first time around I had watched long enough to see the man with the cap walk off and disappear, but as the tape continued to run, he reentered the screen carrying a plastic bag with a gondola printed on it. That’s when luck kicked in. I had assumed that he was not coming back but he crossed the avenue and got into a car. He was parked in a Muni-Meter space, and the camera gave me a crystal clear view of his license plate.

“Now I’ve got you.”

Chapter Seventeen

DMV gave us all the info we needed.
The identity of the man on the surveillance tape—the same man I had seen at the funeral and was heretofore unidentified—belonged to a retired Yonkers cop now working as a private investigator. His name was Maxwell Blick.

Rodriguez was behind me as we climbed the six flights to Blick’s apartment. “Adriano, why is it that all these investigators live in walk-ups? Ugh!”

“Don’t complain, Chalice, it’s good for your glutes—not that yours need work.”

My jaw dropped. I stopped and looked back. “Are you checking me out?”

Rodriguez grinned sheepishly.

I warned him playfully, “One word of this to your girlfriend and you’re a eunuch.”

Rodriguez cringed. “If you like, I can walk ahead.”

“
Yeah
, why don’t you do that?” Okay look, I’m young and in good shape, so six flights of stairs was not a real challenge, but it was an older building, and the marble steps had become loose from decades of wear. Each step rocked and teetered like a balance board—I had the feeling that the smallest misstep might put me on my keister. Yes, that’s right, the one Rodriguez was surveilling.

Maxwell Blick had put in his twenty years and retired as a police sergeant. He had a license on file with New York State as a private investigator. Almost anyone can get one—all it takes is a $400 application fee and a
clean sheet
. We had Blick’s history, photo, and prints. We also had his phone number. Did I mention that he was not answering his phone? Okay, he wasn’t answering his phone—hence the need for a visit from yours truly.

I looked up—there were only two more flights to climb when my cell phone rang. It was Tully at the crime lab. “Tully, my man, what’s happening?”

“Chalice,” he said in a heavy Jamaican accent, stretching out the second syllable:
Cha-leeee-see
. “I got some developments for you, girl.”

“Tully, I’m just about to pound on someone’s door—can you tell me in thirty seconds or less?” Tully is ultra laidback and a notorious slow talker. I love the man to death, but sometimes you just have to put expediency before friendship.

“Sure, sure,” he said, sounding as if he had to gear up in order to speak quickly. “One of the items recovered at the Nadine Fey crime scene was a white handkerchief, a man’s handkerchief.”

“Her assailant’s?” I asked excitedly.

“Probably, but the only DNA evidence on the handkerchief belonged to the victim—lipstick and saliva.”

“Why do you think it may have belonged to the assailant?” I didn’t want to sound vulgar, but I could see the need a streetwalker might have for a large handkerchief or a pack of Kleenex.
Yuck!
Rodriguez and I continued to climb the stairs while I spoke with Tully.

“Because, Chalice, spectrographic analysis revealed the presence of chloroform residue.”

“I see.” We were now on the top landing. Rodriguez was waiting for me to get off the phone. “What about the blood-smeared twenty-dollar bill? Where’s the DNA report on that?”

“No match on the CODIS system. The DNA is male, but it’s not in the national database.”

Rodriguez whipped his pointer finger, indicating that I needed to wind up the call. “Got to go, Tully. Anything else?”

“Yeah, one thing, Chalice … the DNA on the twenty indicates he could be Asian—thirty-seven-percent probability based on the genetic profile.”

“Asian,” I repeated. “Thanks, Tully. Bye.” I stashed my cell phone. Rodriguez and I made eye contact, and then I knocked on Blick’s door. I waited a moment. “Mr. Blick? Maxwell Blick?” I knocked on the door again.

I finally heard footsteps approaching the door. “Who’s there?”

“It’s the police, Mr. Blick. We’d like to ask you a few—”

I heard a
plink
noise, and then a grunt. The door shuddered as if someone had fallen against. I looked at Rodriguez and saw that he had interpreted the signals exactly as I had—Maxwell Blick had just been shot.

Chapter Eighteen

A bloodstain marked the bull’s eye on his back.
Blick was dead by the time we got into the apartment. I stared through the window at the rooftop across the courtyard. It was a sniper’s dream come true—a secluded courtyard perch so that he could take all the time in the world. The killer merely had to wait for the right moment to pull the trigger. A terrible thought crossed my mind; by calling Blick to the door, we had given the shooter the perfect angle of trajectory into the narrow apartment.

I called Sonellio and apprised him of the developments while we waited for the crime scene team to arrive. I found five sealed throwaway phones in Blick’s closet.

Rodriguez approached and looked over my shoulder at the cell phones. “You think he had stock in Verizon?”

“Of course he did,” I chuckled. “I don’t suppose you found another cell phone, one we could dump to obtain his phone records?”

“Negative.”

“Why was Blick so concerned about security that he used a fresh burner every day?”

“They’re cheap,” Rodriguez said.

“They’re not
that
cheap. Ever meet a frivolous PI?”

“Frivolous PIs? No. Never. Everyone of them is as tight as a clam’s ass.”

Clam’s ass?
My brow furrowed while I tried to picture a mollusk’s sphincter. I couldn’t. “So he must have been working on something big. I mean, you don’t throw away a phone everyday if you’re merely following a lothario around town, right?”

Rodriguez seemed confused. “Lothario?”

“Yeah, you know, a married guy with a wandering penis.”

“Huh?”

“A philanderer.”

“Oh.”

“Well, you get my point, right? I mean we have Emma Sands, who did high-society fundraising, and Cronan Hartley, an upper-crust attorney.”

“And Blick was tailing Hartley.”

“It feels like a game of high-stakes murder to me.”

“What about Fey, the streetwalker?” Rodriguez asked.

“I don’t know exactly how she fits in yet. I’m not sure how any of it fits.” I rubbed my eyes. “My head hurts and I’ve got dinner plans.”

Rodriguez grimaced. “Gee, a headache and dinner plans. It sounds like someone is trying to create an alibi as a pretext for not having sex.”

“Yes, that’s it,” I said in a mocking voice. “I’m going on a date, and I’m telling my partner hours ahead of time so that he can testify to the fact that I had a headache at work to give me an excuse for blowing off my date if he makes a sexual advance …
or maybe I’ll just take an aspirin
.” I chuckled lightheartedly. “Jerk!”

Chapter Nineteen

“Well, this is a nice place.”
Farrell owned a fabulous loft with twenty-foot ceilings, poured-concrete floors, and a kitchen that an Iron Chef would trade his Shun knives for. I mean
wow
—Wolf appliances, granite countertops, and cherry-wood cabinets—not that I’m impressed with any of that stuff. Ma is the best cook in the world, and she does it all with a burnt frying pan and her grandmother’s old rolling pin.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Experience will teach you there’s no reason to ask that question.”

“Great,” he said as he took my coat and bag and placed them in the closet. “I like a woman with a healthy appetite.”

“Well then, you should like me a lot.”

Farrell looked handsome in his sweatshirt and glasses, the personification of geek chic. I glanced through the floor-to-ceiling windows—we were in lower Manhattan, so there were no skyscrapers to gawk at, but I had a magnificent view of the Westside piers and the Hudson River. I felt terribly guilty for bailing on Rodriguez with so much going on in the investigation, but he insisted that I go on my date. To tell the truth, I needed a little distance from the case, a short pause to sharpen my senses so that I could attack it with renewed vigor in the morning.

Farrell opened a bottle of wine and filled our glasses. I took a large gulp. “I really needed this.”

“I know. I heard about the dead PI. What happened?”

“Not much to tell. We arrived at his apartment to question him, just as someone picked him off from across the courtyard. Ex-cop. He must have had a great memory because there were no records to be found—closet full of burner phones, so there are no contacts to follow up on. I know he has a car, because that’s how I traced him. We’re checking all the garages in the area for his ride.” My cell phone rang.
Jesus, what timing
. I didn’t want our evening disturbed, but I was happy to see Ambler’s ID come up on the display. “Sorry,” I said apologetically. “I’ve got to take this.”

“No sweat. I’ll get our dinner going.”

“Talk to me, G-Man.”

Ambler chuckled. “You’re the only one who can call me that and get away with it.”

“And I know it. What did you find out?”

“Do you have any idea how much Cronan Hartley was worth and how many investments he had?”

“Do I want to know? I mean don’t make me feel bad; I eat peanut butter and jelly three nights a week.”

“Really?”

“No. Actually it’s two nights of PB&J and one night of cream cheese and jelly, but I didn’t think I needed to be that specific.”

“You are kidding, right?”

“Yes, I’m kidding. So tell me about Hartley’s finances.”

“He was worth upward of seventy-five mil: securities, precious metals, brokerage. I’ve been analyzing his accounts all day—still have a couple to go. He was pretty clever, but I traced several random transfers that ended up in an account in the Channel Islands.”

“I have no idea where that is. Is that, like, near Guam?”

“Ha! Guam? Your geography sucks, Chalice. The Channel Islands, and the Isle of Jersey, to be exact, are located off the coast of France.”

“And this is significant, why?”

“The Isle of Jersey is like the Cayman Islands—it’s a tax haven. Hartley moved money there from various trusts and corporations to avoid taxation.”

“Is that legal?”

“Yes, it’s legal. He had about thirty million stashed over there.”

“That’s a lot of peanut butter.”

“Sure is.”

“But you didn’t call to tell me he was a shrewd investor.”

“No. I’m calling because money never left that account, except just once—fifty thousand was wire transferred to a numbered Swiss account.”

I heard sizzling and looked over at the kitchen. Farrell had just placed two immense burger patties on the flat top. He turned to me and smiled as he dropped a basket of fries into hot cooking oil. I may have drooled.
Nice!
This guy may actually get some.
“And you have no idea who owns the Swiss account?”

“No, Chalice. That’s why the Swiss thing is so popular—the accounts are numbered. They’re anonymous.”

“Fifty thousand is a big number. Can you dig into that any further?”

I heard Ambler sigh. “That won’t be easy, but you know I’ll try. I’ll call you if anything turns up.”

“Thanks, old friend. I owe you.”

I disconnected and took a sip of wine. The burgers had been flipped, and Farrell was shaking the excess oil off the fries. It was such a maddening case. I was hoping for an epiphany as I walked around the counter to where Farrell was preparing comfort food. I picked up the salt grinder. “Let me season those for you.” I blew on a salted fry to cool it and fed it to him. “Good?”

“Just right.”

I put my arms around him and gave him a kiss. It was shaping up to be a perfect date. The river and distant New Jersey shore were in view over his shoulder as I pressed my lips to his again. I could taste the salt from the French fry. Something was going on in the background, but I was in
the zone
. The background became a blur as I explored his warm, wet mouth. I felt myself melting away, when a chill racked my body. I grabbed Farrell and yanked him down onto the floor. “Oh, Stephanie,” he moaned just as the window shattered and a bullet zinged past his shoulder.

Chapter Twenty

“Steve, are you all right?”

It took a moment for Farrell to realize what had happened. He took an account of himself and finally nodded. “I think so.”

I sprang up from the floor and raced to the shattered window, just in time to see Quinlan race across the opposite rooftop. That’s when it hit me.
Fifty thousand bucks. Hartley hired an assassin.
But why?

I had arrived at Farrell’s apartment dressed third-date-appropriate, including a sexy bra and panties, but not including a matching shoulder holster. I sprinted over to the closet, grabbed my coat, and fished in my bag for my automatic. Bewildered, Farrell looked around his apartment. Icy wind whistled through the shattered window. “Call 911,” I yelled as I reached for the door. “That was Quinlan on the rooftop. I saw him.”