In This Rain (28 page)

“Any time the system takes a black community seriously, I’m pleased. The investigator on the case, though. Ann Montgomery.”

“What about her?”

“Not a good choice, I don’t believe.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“One thing, she’s hotheaded.”

“You know.” Charlie smiled. “I’ve heard that about you, too. Never stopped me from appreciating your work.”

Westermann grunted. “You’d stop appreciating me damn fast, I stopped delivering Harlem for you. Anyway, we ain’t talking about me. You aware Montgomery got a hate on for Walter Glybenhall? She finds a way to fry his fat, she’s gonna do it.”

“If there’s a reason to, then I have no problem with that.”

“Really? You’re talking about a friend, Charlie.”

“Friend’s a fluid concept in politics, Edgar.”

“For some people, so I hear.” Westermann popped the last of his cookie in his mouth. “You know much about her?”

“Montgomery? I know she was the partner of that DOI guy from the Dolan Construction case, which means she hates me. But I don’t think that’s a problem, if that’s what you mean.”

“What I mean got nothin’ to do with that. Word is, she’s known Walter Glybenhall since she was a kid.”

“The circles she travels in, I’m not surprised. Are you telling me they’re particularly close?”

“I’m saying the opposite. I don’t know the details, but something happened, lot of years ago. What I hear, she’d be happy if she could nail his hide to the barn door.”

“I’d think that would make you happy, too.”

“Would, if she could make it stick. But you beat the bushes before the shotgun’s loaded, turkey gets away every time.”

Charlie had to grin. “Edgar, when you talk like that I could listen to you all day. But I know you’re a busy man. What are you saying?”

“Just trying to make sure DOI builds a case. Solid, know what I mean? No shortcuts that’ll jump up and bite ’em in the ass. My constituents don’t want to see another rich white man get away with the murder of a black woman— ”

“Stop right there, Edgar! Your down-home metaphors are charming but you will not sit here and say Walter Glybenhall murdered Harriet Winston. That accident— ”

“Whoa! Couldn’t let that go unchallenged on your tape, could you, Mr. Mayor?”

Charlie sat back. “Everything that happens in this room is on the record, Edgar. You know that.”

“Yes, I surely do. And I want this on the record, too: If DOI makes a case against Walter Glybenhall, which I imagine they won’t, him being such a good friend of such a good judge of character as yourself, but if the Lord is passin’ out miracles and they do, I want it to be a good case. Some screwball with her beady eyes drawing down on Glybenhall from the get-go, she might not be the right person to make that case. All I’m saying.”

“Your objection is noted,” Charlie replied evenly. “And thank you for your advice. Anything else?”

“No, no. I best be getting on.” Westermann hefted his bulk from the chair. “And no need to thank me, Charlie. Any time I can help, you just call me. Any time at all.”

With the door safely shut behind Westermann, Charlie pressed the hidden button that stopped the tape. He turned to Don. “What the hell was that?”

Don shrugged. “He’s running for mayor. He wants to be on record defending his community.”

“Anything in it, you think? You know anything about Montgomery and Walter from ‘a lot of years ago’?”

“Can’t hurt to check it out.”

“Or maybe I should just have Mark Shapiro pull her. To be safe.”

“You can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because she hates you, and Glybenhall’s your bud.”

“Well, when you put it that way

”

“It would look that way. Now that it’s on the record.”

“Damn. Boy, that’s like Edgar, isn’t it?”

“How do you mean?”

“If he’d gone quietly to Shapiro, he might have gotten Montgomery pulled. As long as I didn’t know anything about it.”

“Yeah, but this is Westermann. He’s not about to talk to a Commissioner when he can make the mayor sit down with him.”

“That’s what I mean. He made me listen, but now he won’t get what he wanted. Now she’s got to stay. All we can do is hope to hell there’s nothing for her to find.”

Sutton Place

For the first hour flying south down the highway, it was just Ann and the sunshine and The Barber of Seville. Then, as she neared the Tappan Zee, her cell phone rang. She wiggled the hands-free earpiece in and glanced at the readout.

“Good morning, Luis.” NYPD shifts started at seven a.m., a good reason, if you needed one, not to be a cop.

“Hey there, Princess, you sound cheerful. Que pasa?”

“Nada, papi. Y contigo?”

“Oh, shit! I didn’t know you could do that!”

“It means you can’t have any secrets from me, Luis.”

“Why, you read minds, too?”

“Yours is an open book, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re so smart tell me why I’m calling.”

“You have my ballistics report.”

“Happens to be my ballistics report. Now tell me what’s in it.”

“I don’t know, but I hope it’s good.”

“Depends what you call good. You’ll probably like this, because it’s cold and cruel.”

“I’m flattered. Go ahead.”

“What blew Kong away was an ExtremeShock ‘Explosive Entry’ load. Three of them, actually. You know anything about that?”

“No, go on and tell me.”

“High-class hollowpoint. Way more destructive than you need, rips flesh to shreds. ExtremeShock calls it ‘Fang Face.’ NYPD won’t let us use it.”

“Gee, that’s too bad. What kind of weapon is it good in?”

“Forty-five auto or semi.”

“Easy to come by?”

“Got to be special-ordered, but any supply shop’ll do that for you. Or you can get it off the web.”

“You can?”

“You surprised?”

“Not really. Any way you can trace this load?”

“You mean, serial numbers on the bullets? Take it up with the NRA.”

“But if we had a gun?”

“Then we could compare. One is too mangled, but the other two may be in good enough condition.”

“Keep them that way,” Ann said, and clicked off.

Morning traffic was beginning to build. Still, she made good time. A few minutes after Perez’s call she swept onto the Tappan Zee Bridge. The wide curve of the roadway ran just twenty feet above the water, giving drivers a man-against-nature thrill until finally the bridge arched and soared, over and down. With some regret she slowed to pay the toll and melded with the Thruway traffic pouring toward the city.

Walter Glybenhall’s Wilson was a .45 semiautomatic.

But so were half the licensed handguns in New York. You couldn’t pick up a guy, and especially not Glybenhall, on that basis alone. You couldn’t even get a warrant for the gun.

In her mind she saw Walter in his overstuffed penthouse, leaning against the fireplace. A smoking jacket, for God’s sake!

In Zurich, twenty years ago, a maroon smoking jacket had hung over a chair the morning she’d blundered into Walter’s apartment. Her mother had been invited there for coffee, and Ann had gone to say goodbye, on her way up to the ski lodge to join her father. It had been Walter’s suggestion that Ann drop by.

She clenched her jaw. Shifting and shooting around a van, she wove into the right lane and out again. Driving like this required concentration; Walter’s image began to fade. Clock and trophies and Walter’s cold smile dimmed in the sun.

Trophies.

Abruptly, Ann slowed. She focused on Walter’s Manhattan living room again, zeroing in on the mantelpiece: A silver yacht. Assorted gold-plated golfers. A damn polo player.

And a marksman.

She pulled off the next exit and speed-dialed the phone.

“Luis?”

“Back so soon?”

“Find out where Walter Glybenhall shoots.”

“Walter Glybenhall? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m in the car. Find his gun club and give me a call, okay?”

New York City had only two licensed civilian firing ranges. Glybenhall wasn’t likely to belong to either of them; the idea that he’d shoot beside bus drivers and off-duty security guards was laughable. It was likely he took his four-thousand-dollar gun to Westchester or the fox-hunt hills of New Jersey, and she was near both. Or maybe he shot somewhere near his Southampton palace. She could be there in under three hours.

She drove into Tarrytown, because it was near the exit, and parked. She was window-shopping without seeing whatever was there when her phone finally rang.

“Took you long enough!”

“Ann?” Not Perez. A woman’s voice, both familiar and oddly tentative.

“Irene!” Ann laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even look. I was expecting someone else.”

“Girl, I have bad news. Brace yourself.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jen. I just got a call. Ann, honey

Jen’s dead.”

Everything froze, nothing moved in the bright morning. “What? Irene?”

A short pause. “She was killed.”

“Killed? I

In an accident?” From the depth of Irene’s silence Ann knew that was wrong.

“Someone killed her.”

“Oh, no.” A car drove by, the whoosh of its tires impossibly loud. Ann turned, but couldn’t get away from the sound.

“I’m so sorry,” Irene said. “The call I got, it was to an NYPD briefing. I was on the rotation. When I found out it was Jen, I bowed out, of course.”

“Do they know who?”

“No. It was Friday night. They found her Saturday afternoon, but she wasn’t identified until this morning.”

“Why?”

“Oh, honey,” Irene said, voice wavering, “she was naked. No bag, nothing to ID her.”

“No jewelry? That ring with the grape leaves, she never took that off. And my God, that welded chain?”

“The chain wasn’t there. I told the detectives about it. No abrasions, so it must have been cut, not pulled off. She was wearing the ring, but there’s nothing identifying about it.”

“I guess not

” Ann said it reluctantly. She felt like arguing, disputing every word Irene was saying, disproving every fact until the conclusion they pointed at— Jen was dead— was revealed for the sham it was.

“No one reported her missing,” Irene went on, “until she didn’t show up at some benefit committee meeting for something last night. You know her, half the time she doesn’t show up for stuff anyway

.” Ann’s mind went back three days: the restaurant, the laughter, the empty chair. “But it turned out no one had seen her for days, so her mother finally called Missing Persons. They put it together.”

“Damn.” Ann’s vision blurred. Savagely, she wiped her tears away. “Damn! Oh, damn.”

“Honey— ”

“Do they have a theory? Where did they find her?”

“In the East River. She was— ”

“Oh, my God.”

“Ann? What?”

“She’s the unidentified white woman in the East River?”

“Yes, how— ?”

“I’m working a case connected with two homicides in Harlem and the cop mentioned it. I blew right by it. Oh, hell.”

“Why wouldn’t you? How would you know?”

“Oh, but

Goddammit! How was— what killed her?”

“She was strangled.”

“Attacked?”

“Someone dragging her into an alley? It doesn’t look like that. She had some old bruises but except for the marks on her neck, no new ones, nothing on her hands or face. And you know, she was into that stuff

”

“I know. I was thinking that. It got out of hand?”

“It does.”

“Do they know who that new man was, that she was seeing?”

“Not yet. She kept it a big secret. We were the people she’d be most likely to tell, and she never told us.”

“The men she didn’t tell us about,” Ann said, thinking of Jen’s shimmering hair, her conspiratorial giggle, “were the ones she thought we’d disapprove of.”

“When did we ever disapprove?”

“I did, when they were married. You all know how I feel about that.”

“You have a right,” Irene said loyally.

“That’s not the point. I was really hard on her a couple of times, once especially when it was a man I knew.”

“I wonder if any of us knew this one?”

“If we did, he was keeping it a secret, too. What about that deputy mayor? Zalensky? Did they talk to him yet? Maybe he knows.”

“I don’t know but I’ll suggest it. And I’m sure they’ll find whoever the guy is. They’ll find who did this, honey. And I’m so sorry to be the one who had to tell you.”

Ann, swallowing tears, heard a small sound and realized Irene was weeping, too. Nothing remained to be said, but neither cut the connection. It was a big, bright morning to be alone in.

Sutton Place

When her phone rang again Ann realized she’d been standing blankly on the street corner, for how long she couldn’t have said. She checked the readout. “Hello, Luis.”

A brief pause. “Hey, mami, you okay? You sound down. And you’re not yelling that I took too long.”

“I just got some bad news.”

“Sorry to hear that. Any way I can help?”

“I don’t think so, but thanks. Did you find where Glybenhall shoots?”

“Listen, I think maybe you better take a breath. I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

“What, Glybenhall? He has a license for a Wilson Combat .45. It can take that ExtremeShock load, right?”

“Anyone’s .45 can. And I thought you were looking at Ford Corrington for these homicides and I thought you were crazy then.”

“Dammit, Luis! Did you find the gun club, or not?”

“Princess? Even taking into account your bad news you just got, you’re pushing it.”

The wind blew a sheet of paper against Ann’s leg. She shook it off. Turning away from a dog walker’s inquisitive stare, she said, “I’m sorry, Luis. You’re right.”

“De nada. Now fill me in. Why do I care where Glybenhall shoots?”

“Because I think he’s behind it.”

“Behind what? Behind his own accidents?”

“And the killings.”

“The Winston lady, you mean? The brick accident?”

“And Kong and that other kid, too. T. D. Tilden.”

“You better explain.”

She did, as she had for Joe. Though Perez asked questions, didn’t follow her leaps. “I don’t get that,” he said more than once, and she tamped down a surge of impatience and went over whatever it was again. Maybe he was just being cautious. Or maybe, she thought as she heard him ask, “Princess? You still there?” and realized she’d lost her thread and fallen silent, maybe it was she who was being unclear. A part of her kept wanting to get Perez off the phone so she could call Jen. When Jen answered, the two of them would have a big laugh, and then call Irene, trying to be properly respectful and sad about whatever poor girl had really been found in the East River—