The Finishing School (31 page)

“Trev had a major breakthrough,” Bridget said.

“He found out about Carmen?” Melanie asked eagerly.

“No, even better. They asked him to mule tomorrow’s shipment.”

“Are you serious? In his stomach?”

“I mean, we won’t let it get to that point, but yeah. Is that the
best
, or what? We never thought we’d get so lucky. Oh, and just so you feel okay about things, there was no sign of trouble from Expo
whatsoever
. They went for it hook, line, and sinker.”

“I don’t get it. Did Trevor even ask about Carmen? I mean, how did the idea of him muling come up?”

“There was an interception last night over Expo’s phone that—”

“Shhh!” Melanie said, looking around.

“Oh, right.” Bridget lowered her voice. “It’s Expo talking to this guy Bud LNU.”

“LNU” was cop talk for “Last Name Unknown,” pronounced “La-NOO” when spoken aloud. Melanie’s first week on the job, she’d been assigned several unrelated cases with subjects known only by first names, and she’d assumed the Lnus were some depraved Vietnamese crime family who, unbeknownst to her, had come to dominate New York City’s underworld. The senior prosecutor who enlightened her had a good laugh at her expense.

“Trevor told us about this Bud guy. An associate of Expo’s, right?” Melanie asked.

“Yeah. We thought he was a lieutenant, and maybe he is. But Expo seems to be taking a lot of cues from him. Who knows, maybe Bud’s really the one pulling the strings.”

“So what did they
say
?”
Get to the point
! she felt like screaming.

“Dan has the line sheet. You can read the call. Check out the part where Expo goes ‘anybody listening can suck my dick.’ I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.”

“No, what did they say about
Carmen
? That was the whole idea, remember? To see if we could get them talking about what happened to her?”

“Oh. Hmm. Well, they didn’t say much about Carmen. I mean, it wasn’t clear to me from this call that these guys had anything to do with her disappearance at all. Anyway, about the drug case, the plan is for Trev to fly down this afternoon with one of the bodyguards. We’re gonna be all over it with surveillance. Ray-Ray and another guy on the flight. Tons of guys in the airports. You, me, and Dan and some backup from the locals at the El San Juan Hotel.”

Melanie gave up on asking about Carmen. She’d read the call, and maybe that would tell her something. But Bridget was useless, so Melanie might as well focus on worrying about the
other
vulnerable young witness.

“Listen, Bridget, I’m not convinced this is a smart idea. No matter how much surveillance we do, how can we protect Trevor sufficiently? He’ll still be out of our sight a lot of the time, in their custody.”

“Lieutenant Albano already gave the green light. This is the biggest break in the case so far.”

The flight attendant pulled a wheeled metal cart up to Melanie’s row, braking it with her foot.

“Something to drink?” she asked Bridget.

“Oh, I’m seated a few rows back. I’ll go back to my seat.”

“Coffee, please,” Melanie said.

“Hey, do you have, like, a mirror or a compact or something?” Bridget asked.

“Yes, but it’s under my seat. I can’t reach it now,” said Melanie. The flight attendant was in the process of pouring hot coffee into a cup on Melanie’s open tray table.

“How’s my friend doing?” Bridget said, pointing to a big pimple on her chin. “My zit
had
to come to Puerto Rico, too. Doesn’t that
always
happen just when you’re trying to impress a guy? Is it really bad?”

“No, it’s fine,” Melanie lied. Actually, it
was
pretty bad, now that she mentioned it. The foundation makeup Bridget had caked onto it only made it more obvious. And then, because she couldn’t resist, even though she knew the answer, Melanie asked, “So which guy are you trying to impress?”

“Dan!” Bridget practically squealed. “Isn’t he
hot
? I have a total crush on him. I think he likes me, too. We went out for beers last night.”

Melanie had to swallow very carefully to avoid choking on her coffee. “Really? Did you have fun?”

“
Oh
, yeah, big time! I mean, nothing sexual or anything. Not yet. I want him to look at me like a potential long-term relationship, so no hootchy-kootchy on the first date.”

“It was a
date
?”

“Well, it was him, me, and Ray-Ray. But then Ray left and Dan stayed, so yeah, it turned into, like, a date.”

“And he seemed interested?’

“I
think
so. I know he’s definitely looking. See, me and Dan come from the same background. Families on the job and whatnot, so we know a lot of people in common. Dan’s cousin Brian, who he’s close to, is a fireman with my brother-in-law Nick, and our dads are, like, the same generation in the PD. Anyways, so I know Dan’s been wanting to settle down for years, ever since Diane Fields dumped him, that evil bitch. In the whole time he had, like, one serious thing. It was pretty recent, actually, but it didn’t work out.”

“Oh. Why not?”

“I heard the woman was married, although it surprises me Dan would get involved in a situation like that.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’m interested in him, so I ask around.”

Melanie knew she should stop, but she just couldn’t. “So did Dan act interested in
you
?”

“He was playing it cool, but I’m pretty sure he
was
. And then I had my cards read by this old hippie chick who hangs out in the pub, and right in front of Dan she goes, my future husband is someone I’d been drinking with that night. Is that amazing or what? I think it’s a
sign
.”

“Maybe she meant Ray-Ray.”

“Ick! No way would I ever marry a Chinese guy.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not racist or anything. I mean, Bruce Lee was hot. Even Jackie Chan is hot. Well, sort of. I’m into the martial-arts thing. But Ray-Ray? He’s way too short.”

“He’s taller than you.”

“Nope, I’m sticking with my own kind and marrying a big Irish hunk. Dan’s the one for me. Whether he knows it yet or not. But listen, I better get back to my seat and catch the stewardess before she passes me by. The coffee smells good.”

“Okay.”

After Bridget left, Melanie stared out the plastic window at the bright, empty sky. Mere minutes earlier she’d been fairly confident her relationship with Dan was over, and all for the best. So why did she feel this devastated at the thought of him with someone else?

Amazing what a little competition’ll do for your perspective.

A WHILE LATER Melanie was still absorbed in staring out the airplane window when someone once again sat down in the empty seat. When she turned and saw Dan—looking spectacular, smelling clean and yummy, staring back at her with clear blue eyes—she felt such a wrenching sense of loss that for a moment she couldn’t even speak.

Seeing her face, Dan held up his hand. “Don’t get upset.”

“I’m not upset,” she said quickly.

“You
look
upset.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“You shouldn’t be. I’m only bothering you because Bridget said you wanted to see the line sheet from that intercept last night. Otherwise I would never’ve come over here.”

“Can’t we put this fight behind us?”

“Sure, I get it. We’re grown-ups. We keep our distance, keep it professional. When the case is done, we go our separate ways.”

She hadn’t meant it like that, and she was disappointed he’d taken it that way. Maybe Dan wasn’t, as Melanie secretly hoped, waiting for an overture from her. Maybe he’d be better off with Bridget. The two of them had so much in common, after all, whereas Melanie and Dan might as well have grown up on different planets.

“Right. Professional,” Melanie said, then drew a deep breath. “So show me that line sheet.”

“Here.”

He handed her a copy of a handwritten page taken from the wiretap log. The federal wiretap statute required that a real live human being listen in on every tapped phone call as it was being recorded to make sure the bad guys were talking about crime; if they weren’t, the tape recorder had to be shut off. To prove they were monitoring properly, the agents took contemporaneous handwritten notes summarizing the conversations. The piece of paper she held in her hand contained the monitor’s notes of a phone call intercepted the previous night at 9:48 P.M., between subject Jay Esposito and subject Bud LNU, aka George Eliot.

“Where do you get this aka?” Melanie asked.

“It’s the subscriber name on the cell number Expo placed the call to.”

“It’s a fake.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, come on, George Eliot? Wrote
Middlemarch
?”

“What, you spend all your time in the library in high school?” Dan grinned.

Man, he had a movie-star smile. Her chest hurt, thinking of him out last night with Bridget.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I like libraries. The quiet. The smell of old books. Very Zen.”

“They give me the heebie-jeebies,” Dan said. “Anyway, no low-life drug dealer is gonna know about George Eliot. I mean,
I
don’t know about him.”

“
Her
. Eliot was a woman.”

“See? What’d I tell ya?”

She smiled. “Still, you make a good point. Maybe the name
is
real. Did you run it?”

“Yeah. We got nothin’. Too common. We managed to ID the black bodyguard, though.”

“How’d you do that?” she asked.

“Had a coupla uniforms traffic-stop him last night and ask for ID. One Lamar Gates. He’s got a pretty good rap sheet. Assaults, a few criminal sales, that sorta thing. Did a stretch in Rikers a few years back. This is who Expo has working security for him.” He shook his head in disgust.

“What about the Russian?”

“Pavel LNU. We got shit on him.”

“Hmm, okay. Let me read this.” Melanie scanned the line sheet. “Jesus, and Bridget told me they didn’t say anything about Carmen!”

“Are you kidding me? She’s got her head up her butt, that kid.”

“Yeah, it reads clear as a bell.”

“With how nervous they sound, they gotta be behind it, don’t you think?”

“Sounds like it,” Melanie agreed.

“But nothing concrete. No locations,” he pointed out.

“God, I’m getting nervous about Carmen, Dan. Especially now that they’re recruiting Trevor to mule the shipment. Granted, that could just be because they’re afraid we’re on the lookout for her. But part of me worries it’s because they don’t have her in pocket anymore.”

“Settle down, now, I got a theory about that. I think there might be two separate deals in the works, so maybe they still
are
planning to use her. Here, take a look at this, right here,” he said, leaning across her and pointing, giving her a thrill that she had to work hard to ignore. “Expo sends Pavel to do something at Bud’s request last night. It must be some kind of separate drug shipment.”

“It’s not,” she said, shaking her head as she read the portion he’d indicated.

“Why not? Bud asks about ‘that other thing we talked about before.’ Expo says he sent Pavel to take care of it, then he says, ‘It might not go because of the weather.’ What’s that, if not a drug deal?”

A crystal-clear vision of the Escalade barreling down on her flashed into Melanie’s head, making her shiver.

“It was
me
. Pavel tried to run me down with the Escalade when I left work last night.”

Dan stared at her in shocked silence. After a moment he said, very quietly, “You better be bullshittin’ me, or I’m gonna be incredibly pissed at you.”

“Why at
me
? I wasn’t the one behind the wheel!”

“You think this is a joke? You don’t call to tell me this happened, so I could watch out for you? What if they tried again?”

“They didn’t.”

“Not
yet
, maybe, but I guarantee you they
will
. Serves you goddamn right, missy, because now I’m gonna stick to you like glue, whether you hate me or not.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll just have to tolerate that,” she said, her lips curving involuntarily into a smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“Whaddaya, busting my chops?”

“No. I appreciate your concern. Really.”

“
Somebody
better watch your back, with the crazy risks you take. So why the hell didn’t you call me last night when this happened?”

“Because I was in such a rush to follow up on that information you gave me about James Seward. And it was very interesting. Luis Reyes came clean right away. Seward leaned on him to hold back on us, not only about Charlotte Seward’s being home when the girls died but about the fact that Reyes actually reached Seward on his cell at least two hours before anybody called the police. You know what that means? We have Seward on obstruction!”

“Why the hell would Seward do that and leave those poor girls lying there? It almost makes you think he was involved somehow, that he needed the time to pretty up the crime scene. Which reminds me, I talked to Butch Brennan from the Crime Scene Team, jeez, it’s gotta be a couple days ago now. Things’ve been so crazy, I forgot to tell you.”

“You mean, about whether it was staged?”

“Yeah. He tells me there was something very odd. No latent prints of value anywhere in Whitney Seward’s bedroom or bathroom. Only smudges. Like the whole place’d been wiped clean.”

“Hmm.”

“You put that together with the open windows and the drugs planted near Whitney’s right hand when she was a lefty, and I’d say it’s pretty clear. Somebody else was there, knew there was monkey business, tried to delay discovery of the bodies, and tried to make the deaths look like voluntary ODs when they weren’t. What I
don’t
get is, why would
Seward
be the one doing that?”

“Covering up out of concern for his political career?” Melanie suggested.

“But he’d have to know there was something
to
cover up.”

“I agree, it’s very strange. Maybe there’s some other explanation. Luis Reyes thinks Seward only delayed because he got caught with his pants down in the middle of an assignation with Patricia Andover.”