NYPD Red 4 (14 page)

His face-to-face with Annie Ryder would have to wait.

ANY WOMAN WHO
tells a man she wants to be cuddled and not fucked is either lying to herself or to the guy, or both
, Jeremy thought after he’d brought Sonia to her third frenzied orgasm in an hour and a half.

The first one had left her in tears, and he held her in his arms while she sobbed for the dead actress. The second one was much more joyful, like a good old-fashioned, no-strings-attached romp in the sack. The final one was slower, more tender at first. He took his time, teasing her with his tongue, lulling her with gentle kisses, sliding her down onto his lap, and keeping up with her gentle undulating rhythm.

And just as she began to slow down, he lifted her up, and with her legs wrapped tightly around him, he pressed her against a wall with deep, hard, unremitting thrusts until the moans of “Don’t stop” exploded into cries of surrender.

Another satisfied customer
, Jeremy thought as he showered. Everybody was good at something, and he’d been blessed with the equipment and the technique to drive a lover to insane new heights.

In the end, not all of them remembered him fondly. Some despised him. Some wished him dead. But none of them would ever forget him.

Sadly, none of that charm or sexual prowess would serve him well in his next encounter. All anyone needed to go up against Annie Ryder was cunning. And he knew enough about her to know that she had more than most.

And yet when the gray-haired woman opened the door to her apartment, Jeremy couldn’t help himself. “You’re much younger than I expected,” he said, reverting to habit.

“And you’re every bit as full of shit as I expected,” the old lady said, ushering him into the living room. “Have a seat.”

He sat down on a rose-colored sofa, and she sat next to him, practically knee to knee. “You called me,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Your son has my necklace.”

“
Your
necklace?” Annie said. “You and I must not be on the same page, because the necklace all the TV reporters are talking about belongs to these two Bassett brothers.”

“It did. But I hired your son and his friend to procure it for me, and they reneged on their part of the deal.”

Annie smiled. “And from what I understand, according to the Book of Jeremy, the punishment for reneging is a bullet through the brain.”

“That was an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

“What about shooting my son? Was that another unfortunate misunderstanding?”

“Mrs. Ryder—”

She rested her fingers on the back of his hand. “Please … call me Annie.”

“Can we cut the crap, Annie?” he said, pulling his hand away and standing up. “I’m not one of your marks. I’m the guy who hired Raymond and Teddy to do a simple job, and they turned it into a page-one clusterfuck. Here’s the bottom line: you’ve got the hottest piece of jewelry on the planet, and there’s not a fence within three thousand miles that will handle the necklace Elena Travers died for. So unless you’re wired up to the diamond mob in Antwerp or Amsterdam, you can either sell it to me or you can wear it to your next tea party and watch the rest of the old ladies wet their—”

“Get out,” Annie said.

“What?”

“You heard me,” she said, standing. “Get out, you foul-mouthed, disrespectful little snot. Get out before I call the cops.”

“Look, I’m sorry about the language. All I want is the necklace.”

“I don’t have any necklace, and even if I did, I wouldn’t sell it to a bad-mannered, ill-bred punk.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small cylinder. “This is pepper spray. I’ve used it before, and I’ll use it again. Out.”

She opened the door and watched as Jeremy backed out. Then she locked it behind him.

Teddy came out of the bedroom. “Ma, you were awesome, but now we’re never going to sell the necklace.”

“Of course we will.”

“To who?”

“Your good buddy Jeremy. He’ll be back, and next time he shows up, he’ll show me a little more respect.”

“You think he’ll be back?”

“Not back here, but he’ll call me in less than an hour. Guaranteed.”

“You are the coolest mom in the world.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. How are you feeling? Still sore?”

“It hurts, but no big deal.”

“Can I get you anything? You want some tea?”

“Sure.”

Annie filled the teakettle and then set it on the stove. Then she went to a cabinet and took down a tin of cookies.

“Hey, Ma, can I ask you one question?” Teddy said.

“Anything.”

“Isn’t pepper spray like a weapon?”

“It’s for self-defense, but technically pepper spray can be a dangerous weapon.”

“But you have a thing about no weapons, so how come you have pepper spray in your pocket?”

Annie took out the cylinder. “You mean this?” she said, holding it up.

Teddy grinned. “I got you now, Ma. How you gonna talk your way out of this one?”

Annie pointed the cylinder directly at her face, pressed the button, and sprayed it into her mouth.

“Breath freshener,” she said. “Wintergreen. Any more questions?”

“GO NEXT DOOR
and take a nap,” Annie instructed her son after they’d finished their tea and cookies.

“Aw, Ma,” Teddy whined. “That place stinks like cat. Why can’t I just stay here?”

“Because this place stinks like cop. There were two detectives here this morning. What do I do if they come banging on my door with a warrant? Tell them to come back in five minutes so I can tidy up?”

“Fine,” Teddy said, sulking. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got a date,” she said, her eyes smiling. “Now get out of here while I make myself as beautiful as I possibly can, considering what I’ve got to work with.”

She opened the door, scouted the hallway, gave Teddy the high sign, and he scurried to the adjacent apartment in seconds.

Then she went to the bedroom, opened the closet, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She frowned. “Needs work,” she said.

So she got to work. Makeup first, hair next, and then she slipped into a seldom-worn but totally chic Carolina Herrera black cocktail dress. A pair of sensible heels, two dabs of perfume, and finally, her hands a little shaky, she put the emerald and diamond necklace around her neck.

She went back to the closet door for a second look. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she said. “Who looks like eight million bucks now?”

She walked to the living room and stood in front of her late husband. “What do you think, Buddy?” she said, doing a full twirl. “It normally costs three thousand, but you know what a smart shopper I am. I got it for a steal at Bergdorf’s.”

She laughed out loud, and she could practically hear him laughing with her. She took the urn from the sideboard, set it on the kitchen table, and sat down across from it.

“I’m in over my head, Buddy,” she said. “I could use some advice.”

She placed a hand on either side of the urn and closed her eyes.

“The newspaper says this little bauble is worth eight mil, but I don’t know beans about fencing jewelry. What do you think this Jeremy guy can get for it? Forty cents on the dollar?”

Buddy didn’t respond.

“Thirty cents? Twenty-five?”

Her palms warmed when she got to fifteen. They tingled when she got to twelve.

“So if he’s getting a million out of the deal, what should my cut be?”

She ran through some numbers again until the two of them zeroed in on 17½ percent.

Then they talked. Mostly about Teddy, because he was always their biggest issue, and finally she apologized for not keeping her promise. Buddy had asked her to spread his ashes up and down the Strip in Vegas, and Annie had agreed. She just hadn’t said when.

“There’ll be plenty of time for Teddy to spread us both. In the meantime, I need you around.”

She sat there for ten more minutes, the urn cradled in her hands, until the phone rang. She put it on speaker so Buddy could hear.

“Mrs. Ryder. It’s Jeremy. Look, I’m sorry. We got off on the wrong foot. Can we talk?”

“You can talk,” Annie said. “I can listen.”

“I originally hired Teddy and Raymond for fifty thousand. Then I upped it to ninety. I’ll give you one and a quarter.”

“One seventy-five,” Annie said. “Take it or—”

“I’ll take it,” Jeremy said. “But I need time to pull the money together. How about if I come over tomorrow around noon?”

“Good idea. Bring some chloroform and an empty trunk. What am I, stupid? This either goes down in a public place or it doesn’t go down at all.”

“Okay, okay. What about Central Park?”

“Jeremy, old ladies
without
any jewelry get mugged in Central Park. Meet me at 205 East Houston Street at noon.”

He repeated the address. “What’s there?” he asked.

“Your necklace,” she said, hanging up.

She removed it from around her neck, wrapped it in an empty plastic bag from CVS, took the top off the urn, and dropped the bag inside.

“Keep an eye on this for me, Buddy,” she said. “You’re the only one I trust.”

“IT LOOKED LIKE
you connected with Cheryl after our meeting with Cates,” Kylie said, navigating the car through the usual Third Avenue rush hour logjam. We were on our way to talk to Howard Sykes at Gracie Mansion. “Did you two lovebirds finally cement the relationship?”

“
Connected
would be an overstatement,” I said. “We had a brief encounter, like two ships in the night, only we were two cops on a stairwell.
Cement
is an even bigger stretch. Right now, our relationship is being held together by static cling. As for
lovebirds
…”

“I get it, I get it,” Kylie said, hanging a right on 88th Street. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m happy to have someone to dump it on. You were right this morning about me licking my wounds. By the time I got home last night, I was relegated to the sofa, and I didn’t get to see Cheryl till this afternoon. And you can’t do what I have to do in a house full of nosy cops, so I’m going to try to make reparations tonight over dinner at Paola’s.”

“And are you telling me all this because you think I’m hooked on the soap opera you call your love life? Or is it your not-so-subtle way of telling me not to call you tonight because you’re busy doing damage control?”

“What do you think, Detective?” I said.

“My finely tuned detective instincts tell me that if you’re wining and dining Cheryl at Paola’s, she definitely won’t break up with you
before
dinner.”

We crossed East End Avenue, pulled into the mayor’s driveway, and ID’d ourselves at the guardhouse. An aide escorted us into Howard’s study. I cut straight to the chase.

“Sir,” I said, “we have thirty-five thousand cops at our disposal. That’s more than enough manpower to station a unit at every single hospital in the five boroughs and wait for this gang to strike again. But …” I let it hang there.

“But,” he said, filling in the blank, “you can’t mobilize that many people and still expect to keep a crime wave of this magnitude under wraps.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ve worked with you two long enough to know you didn’t come here to ask me to take the lid off this operation,” he said. “You have a plan, don’t you?”

“Actually,” Kylie said, “our department shrink, Dr. Cheryl Robinson, came up with it. Zach and I like it, but we can’t pull it off without a lot of help from you.”

“What can I do?”

“We need you to help us set up the next robbery.”

“You … you want me to help you rob a hospital?”

“No, sir. We want you to help
them
rob a hospital, but we’ll be there waiting for them.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Maybe I watch too many crime shows on TV, but I thought I’d tell you detectives the problem, you’d dig up some clues, and then you’d track these bastards down.”

“These bastards don’t leave a lot of clues,” I said.

“And which of our city’s fine medical institutions have you selected to be the designated victim?”

“If you can convince them,” I said, “Hudson Hospital.”

“How’d they get so lucky?”

“Two reasons. First, there’s the safety factor. These thugs are well armed. So far they haven’t used their guns, but if they walk into a trap and they’re faced with a SWAT team, they may not give up without a fight. Hudson is in the middle of a renovation, and we can contain the operation to the two floors where there are no patients or staff.”

“And the other reason?”

“We think Hudson has something they want,” Kylie said.

“They’ve stolen anything and everything,” Howard said. “Their philosophy seems to be, if it’s not nailed down, take it. How could you possibly know what they want?”

“Dr. Robinson did an analysis, and they’re being much more selective than we originally thought. They’ve never stolen the same equipment twice.”

He shrugged. “So? Stealing is stealing.”

“There are nuances,” Kylie said. “If somebody breaks into a department store and steals a rack of fifty fur coats, odds are those coats are going to wind up on the black market. But what if he breaks into the same store and takes two coats, six dresses, a few pantsuits, five pair of shoes—”

“It sounds like he’s shopping for his wife,” Howard said.

“Exactly. These guys are taking two of these, three of those, one of this. Dr. Robinson’s theory is that they are slowly collecting inventory for a single medical facility.”

“Jesus,” he said. “You think they’re stocking their own hospital?”

“Yes, but they still don’t have everything they need.”

“What do you think they’ll be shopping for?”

“Dr. Robinson calculated that based on the medical needs of a large percentage of the population, and based on the prohibitive cost of the diagnostic equipment, they would be very tempted to go after a state-of-the-art mobile mammogram machine,” Kylie said.