NYPD Puzzle (13 page)

“That’s not why I was asking.”

“Why were you?”

“Frankly I just want the damn puzzle solved.”

“And you can’t do it yourself?”

“Look who’s talking.”

Cora ignored the comment, picked up a greasy French fry. “I must say, I hardly expected you to spring for such a classy establishment.”

“Hey. It’s close to the office, and you don’t need a reservation. So it’s not Peter Luger’s.”

Cora’s eyebrows raised at the mention of the most famous steak house in New York City. “You eat at Peter Luger’s?”

“If I save up my allowance. And have time to get to Brooklyn.”

“You’re a sergeant. Don’t you make your own time?”

“Yeah, right,” Crowley said. “You know how many cases I handle. Some days I’m lucky to get lunch delivered.”

“You’re out now.”

“It’s a special case. The beloved Puzzle Lady might be charged with murder. Schoolkids might be disillusioned.”

“And you figure if you ply me with cheeseburgers and fries, I just might confess?”

“I wasn’t counting on it.”

“Then why’d you agree to lunch?”

“I was hungry. And I wanted to see how you were going to squirm out of it.”

“What made you think I would?”

“You wouldn’t solve the first puzzle, feigned a whopping indifference. I didn’t know why, but it seemed worth checking.”

“And this helps your investigation how?”

“Well, if it’s true, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, it lets you off the hook for creating the puzzles. You have anyone can corroborate the fact you can’t construct?”

“My niece Sherry. She actually creates the puzzles.”

“And you take credit for them?”

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“At the time, she was hiding from an abusive ex-husband. I was glad to do it for her. I didn’t realize I was condemning myself to a lifetime of pretense.”

“The ex-husband still a problem?”

“Haven’t heard from him lately. He got married, which didn’t slow him down any. Then she got married and had a kid. I think he’s starting to get the hint.”

“Any chance he could be behind this?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Wouldn’t have the nerve. Oh, he’s not above sending a few threatening puzzles. But he’s not capable of murder.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh, yeah. Don’t waste your time.”

“But you say he could have made up the crossword puzzle?”

“A
blind chimpanzee
could have made up the crossword puzzle. Probably the only person in America who couldn’t have made it up is me.”

“Well, maybe we’ll know more when we solve it.”

Cora picked up her cheeseburger. “Maybe so, but neither one of us is going to do it.”

Crowley looked around the diner. “There must be someone here can solve puzzles.”

“Whoa!” Cora said. “You can’t ask a stranger.”

“I’m a cop. I can do what I want.”

“Where’s a
New York Post
reporter when you need one?” Cora laid out the headline with her hand: ‘Arrogant Police Officer Boasts, ‘I’m a Cop, I Can Do What I Want.’”

“Oh. There’s a guy with a crossword puzzle.”

Crowley started to get up.

Cora grabbed him by the sleeve. “Hang on.”

Crowley looked at her in surprise.

“You can’t ask him to solve this for you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m on television. My picture is in over two hundred daily newspapers. You can’t have lunch with the Puzzle Lady and ask someone else to solve your puzzle.”

Crowley sat down. Frowned. “That’s a pain in the ass.”

“You have no idea.”

Chapter

22

Cora paced nervously
outside the Supreme Court building, often seen in courtroom movies on account of being more cinematic than the Criminal Court building up the street. The Supreme Court building boasted a high, wide marble staircase and huge marble pillars set just far enough back from the street to provide a good camera angle and look imposing as hell. Cora recalled Al Pacino playing a scene there in the movie
And Justice for All.
It occurred to her that was a hell of a long time ago.

Crowley had been gone for half an hour. How long did it take to solve a damn crossword puzzle, anyway? Hell, Harvey Beerbaum would have whipped through it in under five minutes. Sherry, too, for that matter. Clearly cops weren’t as smart as they were cracked up to be.

About five minutes later, Crowley came skipping up the street waving the crossword like a giddy schoolboy who just aced his term paper.

“Well, that took forever,” Cora said.

“Yeah. The guys who do puzzles were gone. A bunch of us worked on this. I hope it’s right.”

“You’re not sure?”

“How the hell should I know? There’s no answer grid to check.”

“All the words have to intersect.”

“Oooh, listen to the expert.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“What are you so nervous about?”

“Same as in the restaurant. If one of your cops sees us, I don’t want him thinking, ‘Why is the chief having me solve the puzzle when he’s meeting the Puzzle Lady?’”

“Come on. I wanted to have it solved so I could spring it on you. Not give you time to think while you solve it yourself.”

“Even so.”

They walked down to Chambers Street, Cora ignoring Crowley pressing the puzzle on her, urging her to take a look.

“What are you so excited about? Do you think it’s a clue?”

“It looks like it, but I can’t figure it out. I bet you could.”

“Do you really think so, or are you just pretending to because you have the hots for me?”

“I really believe it.”

“Well,” Cora said. “That’s not particularly flattering.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, dear. I hope you’re better at your job than you are at picking up social cues.”

“Social cues? Lady, I got a homicide to deal with. I went out on a limb letting my prime suspect go. What more do you want from me?”

The question caught Cora up short. She figured she was blushing, was glad she was walking right along. “Is there a coffee shop around here?”

“We just ate.”

“Someplace we could sit.”

“How about a park bench?”

“How romantic,” Cora said. “I haven’t sat in the park with a boy in years.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Of course not. I don’t even know if you’re married.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Not much. At least that’s what married men seem to think.”

“You meet a lot of married men?”

“They aren’t always married.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes they start married, get divorced.”

“Because of you?”

“Not according to my attorney.”

“You’re funny,” Crowley said. “Let’s go.”

“What about the park bench?” Cora said, but Crowley was already escaping down the street.

They found a coffee shop on Chambers, slid into a booth.

“I’m buying,” Cora said. “What’ll you have?”

“Black, no sugar.”

“What a surprise.”

Cora gave the waiter the order.

“Now,” Crowley said, “you’ve stalled long enough. Would you care to take a look at this puzzle? Or does someone else solve crime for you, and you just take credit for it?”

“Nice. You really know how to stick the needle in. Here, give me the puzzle.”

The waiter delivered their coffee while Cora studied the puzzle. When he left, she read the theme answer.

Only three

Column one

Up and down

This is fun.

She looked up from the puzzle. “You can’t figure this out? How could you possibly not figure this out? The way I see it, it’s just like the first puzzle. It’s referring to three numbers in the first column.”

“That would seem obvious. And look at 69 Across: ‘Station in question.’”

“What about it?”

“You tell me.”

Cora looked at the puzzle. “69 Across: ‘Station in question.’ And the answer is … Penn. Penn Station is the station in question.”

“And the question is, what do the numbers in the first column of the sudoku refer to? And that’s mighty interesting.”

“Why.”

“Here’s the sudoku we found on the dead man.” Crowley pulled it out, set it on the table. “There’s three sets of three numbers in the first column. 851, 946, and 273. So you figure it’s one of those. But what is it? A train? No, and even if it was, it wouldn’t be staying in Penn Station. It might be stopping in every now and then, but it’s hardly a number in Penn Station.”

“So what is?”

“There’s a bank of lockers in the Long Island Rail Road section. One of my detectives thought he remembered they were numbered starting at one hundred and going on up.”

Cora shook her head. “Huh-uh.”

“Why not?”

“If that’s the answer, what’s up and down?”

“Aside from the locker numbers, they also have three-digit combination numbers. So we figured maybe up is the locker and down is the combination lock, or vice versa.”

“So go to Penn Station and try both combinations on your three sets of lockers.”

Crowley smiled sheepishly. “Well, actually…”

Cora’s eyes narrowed. Her glare could have wilted flowers. “‘Well, actually’? Did you just say, ‘Well, actually’?”

Crowley squirmed miserably. “My boy Perkins ran up there and checked it out. The locker numbers don’t go any higher than the four hundreds. That knocks out the middle three, 946 and 649. It also knocks out 851. Which leaves 158, 273, and 372. None of those combinations work on any of those lockers.”

“Well,” Cora said. “That’s what took you so long. It wasn’t doing the puzzle. You were checking it out behind my back.”

“It wasn’t behind your back.”

“It wasn’t in front of me, either.”

“I was only looking for verification. It occurred to me it would be nice to get back to you with it all figured out.”

“You wanted to impress me?”

“Yeah.”

“But you know I can’t do puzzles.”

“But you’re great at figuring out what they mean. That’s all I wanted to do. I don’t know what went wrong. By rights, it should have worked.”

“I tend to doubt that.”

“That’s easy to say now that it didn’t.”

“I’d say that even if you hadn’t checked it. I mean, come on, give me a break. You expect me to believe that the sudoku found on the body would also yield the number and combination of a locker in Penn Station? A locker that would have had to have been rented
today.
I mean, these things have a twenty-four-hour limit, don’t they? So, the guy devises a sudoku, primes it with the license plate number of the car he’s going to follow me in, and at the same time includes the combination
and
number of a locker he’s planning to rent in the future. How the hell does he do that?”

“He could have rented it for twenty-four hours and kept renewing it.”

“What, is he nuts? Some of these puzzle people are, they’ll jump through hoops just to construct something no one’s ever done before. Which I guess will happen until someone designs a crossword with no black squares whatsoever.” Cora put up her hand. “Don’t look at me like that. I heard someone talking about it. The point is, for all practical purposes, it can’t be done.” Cora cocked her head at him. “You know what that means, for all practical purposes?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. Here’s my favorite illustration: A naked man and a naked woman start from opposite sides of a room. They approach each other according to the following rules. They cross exactly half the distance they are from each other and then stop. Then they cross half the remaining distance and then stop. They continue to move toward each other in this fashion. Since the distance between them always diminishes by half, in
theory
they will never meet. Nonetheless, they will soon be close enough for all practical purposes.”

Sergeant Crowley grinned. “Are you sure you’re the Puzzle Lady? That doesn’t seem like an appropriate bedtime story for schoolchildren.”

“I didn’t always hawk breakfast cereal. I used to have a life. Anyway, you get the point. The chance this sudoku has anything to do with this crossword puzzle is infinitesimal. It has to be referring to something else. You’re sure the crossword puzzle was the only thing in the envelope?”

“We were really hoping for a note. But we weren’t so obsessed with it we would have ignored anything else.”

“No need to get huffy.” Cora picked up the sudoku. “I wouldn’t have even mentioned it if you hadn’t ignored this until I suggested you look.”

“Oh, low blow.”

“Sorry. I guess I’m a little touchy you keep ignoring my suggestive comments. I’ve been feeling a little old lately.”

“Suggestive comments?”

“Oh, dear. You’re not disinterested, just oblivious. I’m not sure which is worse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, it ain’t puzzles.” Cora shook her head, took a sip of cappuccino.

“Sergeant Crowley?”

Crowley and Cora looked up in surprise.

The waiter stood by the table.

“Yeah?” Crowley said.

“I have a message for you.”