The Kills (47 page)

They were
on the staircase now and the scuffling noises continued, getting closer.
Bessemer was kicking the walls and cursing.

One of
the cops felt it necessary to apologize to me for the perp's foul language.
"That's the crack talking, ma'am. Sorry you have to hear it."

Mike
backed out of the store before the two detectives holding the cuffed prisoner.
"You're the Kentucky Fried Chicken man, no? Two breasts and some wings-to
go. Right out the fire escape with Tiffany. You ought to watch the Food Network
more often, Kev," Mike said, faking a punch in his direction. "
Bam!
Take it down a notch, Kev."

Mercer
came out behind the prisoner. "Let's get him over to Met to sleep off his
high. Psycho him before we think about going to court."

Metropolitan
Hospital was only a five-minute drive. The psych ward there had seen far worse
than Kevin Bessemer.

"So,
Kev, tell the nice lady who your lawyer is. Your real lawyer."

"I
got the best money can buy," Bessemer screamed, twisting against his
captors and kicking at the car tires on the RMP. "I got Clarence Friggin'
Darrow. I got Johnnie Friggin' Cochran. I got Clarence Friggin' Thomas working
for me. They gonna 'peal my case up to the Supreme Court."

One of
the cops grabbed the crown of his head and pushed it down, trying to get
Bessemer off the street and into the patrol car as a small crowd began to
gather.

"What
about Tiffany?" Mike asked. "Tell me who to talk to so Tiffany isn't
left out there to swing in the breeze."

"Fuck
Tiffany," Bessemer shouted, lying back on the rear seat of the car and
hurling his feet against the door as the cop tried to close it. "Tell that
Spike Logan I'm coming back for a piece of what
he
got."

"I'll
catch up with you two later in the day. Let me go on down to the hospital and
sit by his bedside. Maybe when Bessemer sobers up, he'll be willing to talk to
me," Mercer said.

I got
into the passenger seat and while Mike drove downtown toward my office, I tried
to page the child welfare lawyers-Irizzary and Taggart-to learn what had
happened at the meeting with Andrew and Dulles Tripping.

The phone
was ringing as I walked in. It was Peter Robelon. "You've got news?"
I asked him.

He was
still angry about this morning. "Can we strike a deal? I act like a gent
and you keep your goons away from me when you want to talk."

"Depends
on whatever deals you've worked out with Jack Kliger."

Robelon
was silent. It was obvious he had thought I didn't know that he was the target
of an investigation in our office. "That's below the belt."

"So
is everything that's happened to this poor kid for his entire life. Don't use
Dulles as a pawn, Peter. Why are you fighting to keep Andrew Tripping out of
jail?"

Why hadn't
I played hardball earlier in the day? He seemed to be loosening up.

"Look,
Alex, the boy's meeting with Andrew didn't go as well as expected. Mr. Irizzary
told me Dulles was-well-was kind of freaked out by his father."

"And
that surprises you? Your client's a very weird guy. So what's next?"

Robelon
was squirming. "The lawyers are considering another possibility."

"Giving
the Hoyts temporary custody?"

"Yeah.
They're taking him over to the Chelsea Piers where Hoyt's docked. Play some
ball, shoot some hoops, let him go out on the river for the weekend."

"Don't
you think that's good for Dulles?"

He was
silent again.

"Put
aside your personal feelings for Graham Hoyt," I said. "Do you think
he and his wife are sincere about wanting to adopt the boy?"

"Actually,
I do. Hoyt's a pretentious bastard, but he adores Jenna, and she's devastated
about being childless. She'd be a great mother, and they both have a lot to
give to Dulles-between Jenna's warmth and Graham's, well, material
blessings."

"Look,
Andrew's your client, so I'm not asking you to say anything about him. But he's
the last guy I'd want to see playing Mr. Mom."

"Doesn't
mean he killed anyone, Alex. Doesn't even mean he raped anyone."

"We're
just going around in circles. Thanks for letting me know the conversation is
over," I said, ready to end it.

"That's
only part of the reason I called."

"What's
the rest?"

"Any
chance I could meet with you alone, just to talk over some ideas I had about
Paige Vallis's murder? Just the two of us-no cops?"

Not a
prayer. "We're alone right now, Peter. Why don't you tell me what's on
your mind?"

"I'd
prefer not to do it on the phone."

"That's
all I have time for at the moment."

He didn't
pause for very long. "Andrew has a theory."

"I
was almost ready to go along with you," I said. "His theories don't
really interest me all that much, Peter."

"Hear
me out, Alex. The reason Paige Vallis left her apartment and went downstairs
the night she was killed? It's about you."

I sat up
and started writing notes as he spoke. "That's ridiculous, Peter. If
you're trying to make me feel worse about her death than I already do, then
just keep on talking full-speed ahead."

"It's
true. We're sure of it."

"'We'
being you and that terribly unhinged psycho you represent?"

"Listen
for a minute. Andrew thinks he can prove that the reason Paige went downstairs
from her apartment last Friday night was to mail a letter to you, to send
something she needed you to know, to have."

I was
sweeping aside documents and law journals and case reports that had stacked up
on my desk while I was out of town. Laura had sorted the mail from the past two
days but I had buried it under the papers I had carried in this morning, so I
looked for return addresses or unmarked envelopes that might possibly be from
Paige Vallis.

"Like
what?" I was making more of a mess, agitated by Peter's suggestion.

"I'm
not sure, Alex. But Andrew-well, when I see you-"

"I'll
call you back later. Let me look around." There was also three days of
mail at home that I had not even touched, other than to pay some of the bills.

Mike had
followed me in. "What'd that loser want?"

"To
see me alone. Without you-or my goons, as he so politely implied. He says
Tripping thinks Paige Vallis ran into her killer on her way from sending some midnight
missive to me. Does that make sense to you?"

"That
I'm a goon?" Mike was lifting papers and shuffling through things on my
desktop. "Nah."

"I
mean the letter to me."

"Like
a suicide note? Like she sent you an apology for causing you such a hard time
at the trial and then choked herself to death in her hallway? I don't think
so."

"I
don't either. Wouldn't she have called to tell me what she wanted to say, or if
she was frightened, left me a message that she was mailing me something?"

"He's
a whackjob, the Tripping guy. A complete paranoid. Next thing Robelon's going
to tell you is that she sent you a letter recanting her allegations, saying she
made up the whole story about the rape. That's what he and Tripping want you to
believe. That and the fact that the mailman lost the letter."

"You're
probably right."

"Sure
I am. This way, you don't just dismiss the indictment against him in a couple
of weeks, you get to exonerate him completely, with Vallis permanently out of
the way."

I looked
up at Mike. "Good thinking."

"Yeah,
that one goes in the dead-letter department. What's next?"

"I
thought we'd take a ride over to Chelsea Piers. Try to catch up with the happy
campers before the child welfare agency lawyers cut out. See what went wrong at
this morning's meeting between Dulles and his dad, and what the thinking is
about the Hoyts as prospective parents," I said, and filled him in on what
Robelon had told me.

"Nice
day for an outing. Saturday afternoon on the river. Sure you didn't have enough
water this week?"

"The
sun's out now, it's a crisp fall day. I'll spring for hot dogs. If we get
lucky, Hoyt's chef'll cook you a meal."

It was a
little after one o'clock when we left the office and drove across Canal Street
to get to the West Side Highway. "Don't ever tell my mother I took you to
the Chelsea Piers. You know her and her superstitions. All bad things come in
threes," Mike said.

"So
what were the first two?"

"That's
where the
Titanic
was supposed to
dock on its maiden voyage, before that ice cube got in its way. And the
Lusitania
? She sailed from Chelsea on
her regular run to London when the U-boat got her."

"You
look at the place now and it's hard to believe it was the world's premier
passenger ship terminal once." We drove north to Twenty-third Street,
crossing onto the Hudson River Boulevard and parking in one of the large lots.

The
Chelsea Piers, opened in 1910 to house the Atlantic's luxury liners, were a
stunning urban design complex by the same firm that built Grand Central
Terminal. The elegant row of gray buildings, edged with pink granite facades,
took the place of a mess of crumbling, old waterfront structures of the
nineteenth century.

In both
world wars, the piers became the embarkation point for soldiers heading off to
battle. By the 1960s, when air travel had made most ocean crossings obsolete,
the decaying buildings were converted to cargo facilities. And when that part
of the business relocated to the ports of New Jersey a decade later, the
once-grand piers were demoted to use as warehouses, car pounds, and
sanitation-truck repair stations.

By 1995,
after a few years' work based on a proposal by three smart developers, the four
surviving Chelsea Piers-numbered 59 through 62-were transformed through a $100
million project into a spectacular center for public recreation right on
Manhattan's waterfront. Golf driving ranges, batting cages, roller rinks,
bowling, an equestrian center, and a marina that could handle yachts like
Graham Hoyt's were only some of the amusements available on the Piers.

"What's
your guess?"

"Let's
start at the boat. At least the crew is bound to be there, someone who should
know where Hoyt and the kid are," I said.

We took
the promenade south of what they called the golf club and walked along yachts
in the marina, looking for the
Pirate.
There was a warm breeze coming off the water, and although it seemed a bit
choppy, it was deep blue and clean. A maze of small boats crisscrossed the
river, and the commuter ferries worked the waves in both directions.

Graham
Hoyt saw us before we spotted him. He was behind us, coming from one of the
other parking lots. "You have any jurisdiction on the high seas,
Detective?"

"Aye,
aye, Cap-what do you need?"

"Left
here twenty minutes ago to take Ms. Taggart back to her car and answer some
questions for her. Could have sworn I had ninety-eight feet of a fine-looking
boat sitting right at the end of that dock," he said, pointing.
"Grand larceny, I think."

The small
tender, the
Rebecca,
was tied up,
but the slip for the larger vessel was empty.