Seven Ways to Die (35 page)

Only a few minutes passed before Vinnie returned from his desk to report that Roberts hadn’t shown up for work at her P.R. firm yesterday morning. Her employees said it wasn’t “like her” not to even let them know she wasn’t coming in. They’d been unable to reach her by phone all day.

Δ

Calling in advance to warn the Seventh Precinct, within minutes TAZ had descended in full force on Hamilton’s E. 59
^th
Street residence. The Precinct had already staked out the perimeter; it was, fortunately, headquartered on the very next block. This time Cody saw the yellow ribbons with approval, and was also pleased to see that the Special Demolition Unit had just arrived on the scene, its Mark V, an 800-pound robot the size of a riding lawn mower, being rolled down its ramp from the armored truck.

“Who’s in the apartment?” Cody asked the Precinct officer in charge.

“We don’t know,” the officer replied. “When we picked up the clicking sound from the hall, we waited for you as you requested.”

“Yeah,” Cody said. “That was a trick question.”

The officer stared at him without comment.

Another officer escorted the super to Cody, and Cody reassured the nervous Russian that they needed his immediate action and cooperation. “This is an emergency. You have three minutes to get all the residents out of the building and onto the street.”

The man’s shocked look quickly gave way to the New York sangfroid and suspicion. “What is—“

“You’ll need to open up the penthouse for us,” Cody interrupted.

“Do you have a warrant?” the super ventured.

“No, but we do have a battering ram,” Cody said. “Your choice.”

“Just had to ask,” the super shrugged. “Give me a minute to find a key.”

“We don’t have a minute to spare,” Cody retorted.

As the man walked away, the Transit Bureau K-9 detail showed up with a sniffer.

Seeing the jet black German shepherd straining at his leash, Cody had to look away.

“His name is Nero,” the K-9 officer said.

Vinnie took out Patricia’s card, and handed it to the officer.

“Here, boy,” the dog officer said, offering the business card to the eager canine’s nose. “Here’s your target.”

Δ

A heartbeat after the elevator doors opened, Nero barked twice.

“That was fast,” Cody said.

“It’s not that,” the officer said. “That double-bark means explosives.”

The building’s alarm siren sounded, squawking the warning to residents to evacuate. There were no other doors on the penthouse floor. Cody could only hope the co-op owners weren’t so jaded by false alarms after 9/11 that they would ignore the alarm.

Nero, unfazed by the raucous squawking, led them directly to the front door of the penthouse, passing by the janitorial closet and the service entrance without a glance.

He pawed at the front door, and growled, looking at the five men escorting him as if to say, “Your move! My work here is done.”

Cody called for the Mark V to be sent up. Then he signaled for the K-9 officer to take Nero and the super to safety, took the pass key and moved his hand toward the double lock.

“Aren’t you going to wait?” Bergman said, eyeing the door warily.

Cody shook his head. “It won’t be the door,” he said. “These two were exhibitionists. That’s one thing I understand about them. They’d want us to see the stage they’ve set first.”

All the lights in the luxury penthouse were on. But the two detectives could discern at a glance that the main room was empty of anything unusual. The ticking sound emanated from the door to the right of the large room.

“You do the honors,” Cody said, gesturing for Bergman to record their entrance as he himself had done Saturday morning at La Venezia.

Bergman nodded, and took out the digital recorder while Cody moved to the picture window and glanced down at the street where he could see the residents filing out beneath the canopy in various states of disarray. He signaled to Bergman to get started.

“It’s Thursday, November 1
^st
,” he began, “and we’ve entered the penthouse of the late Ward Hamilton…”

Δ

They found Patricia in the barber’s chair, nude, bound, and gagged with a lacy brassiere. Her eyes shouted her relief as she saw the detectives, without a thought for her nakedness. Cody removed his windbreaker and positioned it across the woman’s body as he squatted to examine the device beneath the chair.

“We’ll get you out of here in a sec,” he said to the grateful publicist, whose chest was still heaving with fear.

The bomb squad officer gestured for Cody to step back, but not before the Captain could see the device’s timer counting down from 00:03:00. The demolitions guy saw it too. “We don’t have time to fuck around here,” he said.

Cody was busy freeing Patricia legs.

The bomb-exploding robot rolled through the door.

Its keeper, an East Indian officer in full Hazmat gear whose badge read Krishna Daipur, read the situation at a glance and opened his olive-green notebook. “Disarm or contain?”

“Contain! No time to disarm!”

“Very well, sir,” the Officer Daipur said. “But there can be no certainty of successful containment…”

“Just do what you have to do,” Bergman ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Daipur said, dropping his helmet mask into place.

Once Cody untied the bra from her mouth, Patricia Robert, the only survivor of the diabolical Ward Hamilton and Victoria Mansfield, would not stop screaming.

“Get her out of here,” Cody told Bergman. “Now!”

Bergman already had the terrified woman by the arm and was rushing her to the door.

At the same moment, Officer Daipur was delicately lifting the explosive device from its place beneath the chair. The robot’s abdominal cavity swung open, catching Cody’s windbreaker as Bergman was hustling Patricia toward the door.

Patricia screamed again, this time a mixture of rage and embarrassment as the jacket was nearly wrenched from her sobbing frame. Exchanging a hapless glance with Cody, Bergman quickly disentangled it and restored her dignity.

Cody could see the fear etched in the eyes of Officer Daipur, behind the mask, as the man stood in place, trying not to look at the half-naked woman.

The device’s timer read 00:01:05.

“Is the building clear?” Daipur asked Cody, unaware of the incongruence of his logic.

“Fuck the building!” Cody’s eyes were intent on the timer, as he held the robot’s door open.

 Daipur set the bomb gingerly inside.

Its device read 00:00:45.

Cody swung the hatch closed while Daipur quickly armed the robot.

The officer glanced down at his watch.

Then it occurred to him that Cody was still in the room. “Captain, exit the room immediately,” he ordered. “This is my job.”

Cody ignored him, mesmerized by the timer which was counting down to zero.

The robot shuddered, lifting inches off the floor as the device exploded, muffling the sound as though it were in the next borough.

“Jesus,” Daipur exclaimed. “That was enough TNT to blow up the whole fucking block.”

“I’m sure that’s what the devils were hoping for,” Cody said.

Δ

At Kate Winters’ insistence, the ceremony for Dr. Song Wiley was minimalist chic. It was sponsored by the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, at its retreat center on E. 51
^st
Street next to Greenacre Park. Song’s only religion was her yoga, and she had practiced ashtanga at the center four times a week. The Neptune Society, which she and Kate had joined together three years ago, had already supervised her cremation. Wolfsheim, of course, had reserved Dr. Wiley’s brain and internal organs in case they were required as evidence.

Kate, alone, would spread her ashes at midnight from the Circle Line where they’d had their first official date.

Over Kate’s protest, the Chief had insisted on closing the Park for two hours so the memorial service could be held beside the waterfall. Looking uncomfortable in their funeral garb, all the members of TAZ were on hand to support Kate.

The Friends’ director chanted one of the sutras, surprising everyone with its power—and brevity. Then Kate, looking elegant and composed, approached the microphone. She was wearing a green silk suit that blended in perfectly with the flora of this quiet oasis in the midst of a never-quiet metropolis.

“’The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon,’” Kate began. “You loved to quote that, and I never ceased wondering what it meant. But one thing I always knew: When you first took my hand, you put a song in my heart.”

She addressed the photograph of her friend and lover that had been placed strategically by the falls beside the gigantic bouquet Cody had ordered for the occasion. “Now you live only in my heart, and my heart will be full with your song until the day I die.”

Then she turned off the microphone and gave herself to the comforting embraces of her teammates. She’d been a member of TAZ only a few days, but they were now her family.

Δ

Stinelli rarely attended TAZ social events, preferring to meet its captain on his own turf. But this was an exception. He shook hands with everyone on the team, and put his arm around Kate. “I’ve seen evil in this town,” he said, “but I’ve never seen it like this.”

She knew what he was referring to. This morning Annie reported finding a bullet-shaped plastic mold in the Hamilton’s Sub-Zero freezer.

Simon confirmed the count for him. In Androg’s Unholy Week of Murder, Raymond Handley was Number One, Uncle Tony Number Two. Steamroller Jackson was Number Three and Song Number Four; the newspaper clipping found with Jackson’s body had Hamilton’s fingerprints on it. Jake Sallinger was Number Five. Victoria Mansfield Number Six. Hamilton “didn’t count” because he killed himself, just as Melinda Cramer didn’t count because she was “just practice.” Cody was intended to be Number Seven, but just in case he survived Patricia Roberts was his designated replacement—the “seventh way” of death.

And she would have taken all the neighbors with her. and exploded Hamilton’s deadly numbers sky high.

“I told you he was fucking with me from the beginning,” Cody said to Stinelli.

“What do you mean?”

“I asked Bergman here to call the Staten Island Fairy, who mentioned that Handley had a sister. Turns out Handley had been estranged from her. Her name was Melinda, until she married a whipdick actor whose last name was Cramer. She dumped the actor after three months, but kept the name because she and her brother had developed bad blood between them.”

Bergman had walked up to join them. “Handley wanted to believe she committed suicide,” he said. “He even tried to stop the autopsy, saying it wasn’t necessary. Apparently he’d been supporting her career as a dancer for years, but took it out on her by having her set him up with members of the chorus line to feed his sex jones. She couldn’t stand it anymore, became disgusted with his insatiable needs, changed addresses, got an unlisted number, and disappeared.

“The night he finally tracked her down at the rave was the night she supposedly jumped to her death.”

“Melinda Cramer!? Is that what you’re telling me?” Stinelli sounded incredulous. “That sonofabitch. No wonder he wanted to open her file.”

“Here’s where it becomes interesting,” Cody said. “After she turned down his pimp-money, Melinda supplemented her income by singing in cabarets—and, get this, writing an occasional book review for The Village Voice.”

Stinelli’s eyes widened. “Let me guess,” he said. “She reviewed one of Hamilton’s books.”

Cody nodded. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” he said.

Stinelli grunted.

“Here’s the last piece of the jigsaw. Simon got us a list of her reviews. Two months before she fell off the balcony, she not only trashed Hamilton’s book but ended her review with a plea to the Clue Awards to maintain their high standards by
never
according him the honor he’d been lobbying to receive for nearly ten years.”

“That sonofabitch,” Stinelli said. “So their practice run was revenge, pure and simple.”

“Only, not pure, and not so simple,” the detective said. “And a couple of other things. NYPD found a matchbook on her computer table. It had a phone number on it, and a note. ‘Call me. Ray.’ The number was Raymond Handley’s. And the St. Christopher medal that we found around his neck? It was the same one removed from his sister’s body before he buried her.”

Stinelli looked at Cody. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Captain, but it looks like you’re gonna have to get dressed up one more time. You might even want to bring that date of yours.”

Cody’s eyebrows went up in question.

“I’m putting you in for the Medal of Honor.”

42

Three Months Later

The sun was setting on the approaching horizon, and Cody recognized the first sights of his native State. “That’s Borah Peak,” he said, “the highest mountain in Idaho. We’re nearing the State line.”

Amelie’s eyes were shining with excitement. She pressed his hand.

And, as though he understood Cody’s words, a gravelly bark came from the backseat driver.

Cody glanced in the rearview mirror at Charley, who had awakened from his nap and was now fully alert, his ears pricked with expectation. “Yes, boy,” he said. “Soon as we’ve crossed, it’ll be time to stretch your legs.”

Charley barked again. His tracheotomy made him sound like a throat cancer victim. This time the shepherd surely
did
understand. He knew a rest stop would involve another of the knuckle bones Waldo had thoughtfully supplied him for the trip. They were waiting in the Styrofoam cooler Charley never took his eyes off.

A chorus of approving howls echoed through the van.

Cody and Amelie laughed together.

The wild animals could sense their territory approaching.

Last Halloween night, as Dave had reported to Cody, the wolves in the zoo clinic would not stop howling. They knew Cody was in trouble, and they were trying to warn him, to help him somehow. Finally, at the moment when Charley was licking Cody’s wound to restore him to life, the alpha male leaped over the twelve-foot fence—and led Dave Fox to the cave in time for him to rescue Charley, then on to locate Cody.