Nightbird (7 page)

“People close to her. Very close.”

“They couldn’t be that close. What magazine did you say you were from?”

“
Manhattan
. It’s on the card. Mr. Winters, I also have information from that same reliable source that you were sleeping with Gillian
Stone. Could you comment on that?”

“That’s a rude, insulting question. Who the hell are you?”

“My source swears you were sleeping with her.”

“Your source and you can both go to hell.”

Winters turned gracefully and moved toward the revolving door.

“Don’t you want to know who my source is?” Danny yelled.

Not much of an interview, Danny thought as Winters disappeared through the
whumpf, whumpf
of the revolving door. He’d taken a shot, hoping Winters would be vulnerable so soon after Gillian’s death. It was a long
shot, but he’d thought maybe Winters might lose it, say something stupid. His uncle always said the most truth was gathered
in the hours immediately after the crime. The longer you waited, the more everyone hardened up, lawyered up. Stories got set
in stone.

Danny walked along the sidewalk that edged the hotel side of the underpass. He stopped at the top of a stairway leading under
the hotel, where the driver of a refrigerated truck had been sliding boxes of filet mignon down a metal chute. Danny used
the truck for cover in case Winters came back out. He began playing back the tape. Danny’s voice sounded small in comparison
with that of Winters. The conversation was short. He played it again.

The first thing Danny felt was the man’s wetness against his back, the heat from his body. Then the arm around his throat.
He grabbed the tape recorder out of Danny’s hands. And shoved. Danny flew headfirst, reaching for anything, clutching only
air. His left knee slammed down on the metal chute, his right knee missed the chute, and he spun right and tumbled down the
steps, twisting as he grabbed a pipe with his right arm and heard the pop. He came to rest on the stacks of filet mignon,
his right shoulder directly under his chin. He closed his eyes.

H
ow’s Ryan’s nephew?” Chief of Detectives Paddy “Roses” Ferguson said without looking up. He’d heard Joe Gregory’s signature
knock on his open door.

“Feeling no pain,” Gregory said. “They didn’t admit him. We brought him home from the emergency room, put him to bed. I told
him he was lucky, his first mugging and all he lost was a tape recorder.”

The Chief, known to his old friends as Paddy Roses, shoved a file in his bottom desk drawer, then waved them in, pointing
to the chairs.

“The kid’s pretty banged up,” Ryan said. “Dislocated shoulder is painful.”

“I coulda fixed that myself,” Gregory said, raising his own arm to demonstrate. “I watched the surgeon at St. Luke’s. Nothing
to it. All he did was pick his arm up and twist, then he snapped it in. Like this. Rolled it back… then
craaaack!
Sounded like a gunshot in an alley.”

Ryan and Gregory belonged to a small cadre of experienced detectives personally assigned to the Chief’s office. They handled
high-profile homicides and crimes that lingered on the front page. Informally they were referred to as the “Political Response
Team.”

“The mugging thing is a little hinky,” Ryan said. “The guy didn’t take his cash, just the tape recorder. Danny had just finished
interviewing Trey Winters, and like a dope, walks ten feet and starts playing the conversation back. The guy comes up behind
him, grabs the tape recorder, and shoves him down into the cellar.”

“I’ve seen rookie undercover cops do that,” the Chief said. “They can’t wait to hear their own voices on tape.”

“So waddaya figure, pally, Winters’s bodyguard sees it and coldcocks him?”

“Makes more sense than a mugging.”

“Find out if he has a bodyguard,” the Chief said. “We’ll throw the prick in a lineup.”

“The kid didn’t see shit, Paddy,” Gregory said. “All Danny knows is the guy was strong and smelled like Vicks VapoRub.”

“Vicks VapoRub?”

“That’s what he says,” Gregory said. “I say, mugger or not, you gotta admire the work ethic. Chest congestion, bad cold and
all, he’s out there hustling.”

“I was just hoping some cop didn’t do it,” the Chief said.

Longtime New York City cops refer to the people with whom they started their careers by saying, “We were cops together.” It’s
a specific identification of a specific time: the rookie years in uniform. Chief Paddy Ferguson and Joe Gregory were “cops
together” in Brooklyn, where the Chief earned his nickname because his preferred drink was a lower-shelf whiskey called Four
Roses with a water chaser. In the days when foot cops drank free and freely in uniform, Paddy, after first checking his post
for Internal Affairs spies called “shooflys,” would back into local bars, in a Rockaway version of the moonwalk, while knowing
customers crooned, “Roses and water, roses and water.”

“How about this actress thing?” the Chief said. “We closing that one?”

“Just a couple of loose ends away,” Gregory said.

“I hate that phrase, ‘loose ends.’ Is it still classified a suicide, or am I out of the loop, as usual?”

“Apparent suicide,” Gregory said. “Until we can explain the sticky substance we found on her mouth.”

“What sticky substance? Licorice, Jujubes, what?”

“Stickier,” Gregory said. “We can’t rule out the possibility it’s glue residue from tape. Somebody could have taped her mouth.”

“What’s wrong with that?” the Chief said. “I put tape over my old lady’s mouth all the time.”

“But you don’t toss her from eighteen stories up.”

“That’s because we live in a split-level.”

When relaxed with old friends, the Chief was Paddy Roses, the cigar-chomping street cop. But on cue, the handsome Irishman
could transform himself into the very model of a modern major police executive: the leader of the largest metropolitan detective
force in the world… Chief Patrick Ferguson. Informed, articulate, suave, positively elegant.

“I don’t want a big Hollywood production made out of this case,” the Chief said. “The news gets a whiff something’s wrong
here, they’ll start making shit up. What’s the story on this drug thing? Was she a user or wasn’t she?”

“I read the interviews of Gillian’s friends in the show,” Ryan said. “None of them mentioned anything about drugs. One woman
says she had mood swing problems. Nothing stronger. They all say she was a doll to work with.”

“That’s what friends are supposed to say,” the Chief said. “When I die I expect you guys to say I was an Irish American saint.”

“She didn’t have any needle marks,” Gregory said, shrugging. “No drugs found in the apartment. We’re waiting on toxicology.”

“Toxicology takes two weeks,” the Chief said. “We ain’t waiting two weeks to close this.”

Paddy Roses’ fortunes changed when he was “kidnapped” from a Rockaway gin mill by Monsignor Dunn’s AA crew They delivered
him directly to the NYPD’s secret dry-out farm upstate. After six months of picking apples he returned a healthy man, with
an appreciation for his mind as well as his liver.

“I found these around her neck,” Ryan said, handing the Chief the broken rosary he’d taken from Gillian. Inscribed on the
back of the silver crucifix was the word
FAITH
. The loose white beads had pooled in the bottom of the plastic evidence bag. “I’m going to voucher them separately. In case
we get a rash of confessors.”

“So now we have a possible junkie who says her beads,” the Chief said, examining the broken rosary. “And who may or may not
have had her mouth taped.”

Paddy Roses started studying for boss after he “dried out.” He made number four on the sergeant’s list and was in the top
ten for lieutenant and captain. As a test taker Paddy Roses was pure genius. On the wall behind him was a plaque that read,
“God Bless Multiple Choice.”

“In the meantime, what do I tell Hizzoner, that bastard,” the Chief said. “He tells me he’s getting worried calls from the
Mouse in Hollywood. The Mouse is worried about bad publicity for his new Shangri-la on Forty-second Street.”

“Tell him we got a plan,” Gregory said.

“And what will that plan be?”

“To conduct a thorough and tireless investigation,” Gregory said. “We will not sleep until we get at the truth, and if necessary
bring the alleged perpetrator to justice.”

“And after I extract the phone from my ass, what will I tell him next?”

“Tell him to go fuck himself if he can’t take a joke,” Gregory said.

The Chief leaned forward, almost halfway across his desk, and fixed his blue eyes on his two senior investigators.

“We’re having fun, aren’t we,” he said.

“All we need is a bottle a booze and a coupla broads,” Gregory said.

“Fun’s over,” the Chief said as he slapped his palm on his desk. “The deal is this: Was she alone in the apartment at the
time of death, or wasn’t she? It’s as simple as that. I’ll let you guys work on this for two days, understand? Two days. As
long as we keep it on the QT. The official word is we’re tying up loose ends.”

“We gotta confirm the glue thing,” Gregory said.

“Fine, what else?”

“My nephew thinks Trey Winters, the show’s producer, has something to do with her death,” Ryan said.

“That’s a writer’s opinion,” the Chief said. “You know what writers are in this town, don’t you? Writers are actors who’re
too lazy to work in a restaurant.”

“Gillian told my nephew she was sleeping with Winters. And he was the last one to see her alive.”

“What time was that?”

“He popped in around eleven-fifteen,” Gregory said. “Stayed approximately twenty minutes. Left alone.”

“Eleven-fifteen’s a little late for a pop-in,” the Chief said. “Who is this Winters? Why is that name familiar?”

“He’s married to Darcy Jacobs, daughter of Marty Jacobs, the developer.”

“Mother a God,” the Chief said, smacking his forehead with the back of his hand. “Ever since Marty Jacobs died that outfit
has been a major pain in my ass.”

“We ran a name check on Winters,” Gregory said. “He doesn’t have a record. Plus he has solid alibi witnesses. The Broadway
Arms doorman says he was only up in her apartment about fifteen minutes. His own doorman and his wife confirm he was home
before one.”

“Thank God for doormen,” the Chief said. “Reinterview Winters anyway. Doormen, too. Thorough is my middle name.”

“What about Mrs. Winters?” Ryan said.

“You don’t need to talk to her,” the Chief said, motioning for them to hurry up and finish.

“After Winters left,” Gregory said, “Gillian made a phone call to her sister on the East Side. Next thing we know it’s one
A.M.
and she’s airborne.”

“Guy like Winters is too rich to toss anybody off a balcony,” the Chief said. “He’d hire a pro.”

“That’s what you said about O.J.,” Gregory reminded him.

“Hey,” the Chief said, jabbing his finger at Gregory. “You could be picking your Jockey shorts outta your ass on a foot post
in Staten Island tomorrow. All it takes is a stroke of the pen, remember that. Now tell me about the apartment. Crime Scene
find anything?”

“Nada,”
Gregory said. “No physical evidence, no note, no signs of struggle or forced entry.”

“If this is a homicide,” the Chief said, “we’ll need a goddamned crystal ball to solve it.”

“Save that line for the press,” Ryan said. “They’ll love that one.”

“You got the LUDs there, smart guy? Any other phone calls?”

“She made a total of three calls that evening. The one to my nephew, a two-minute call beginning at seven-fourteen. The second
was to her sister, eleven oh-seven for three minutes. The third call, made after Winters left, lasted twenty-eight minutes,
ending at eleven minutes after midnight. Apparently the sister was the last person she spoke to. We’re going to interview
her as soon as we leave here.”

“I didn’t think you could get length of time on local calls.”

“You can since NYNEX went digital,” Ryan said.

“Live and learn,” the Chief said. “Talk to the sister again. What about the canvass?”

“Mid-Town North handled the canvass,” Ryan said. “Covered the whole building and the one across the street. Less than seventy
percent of the residents of the Broadway Arms were home at the time. Nobody heard or saw anything. Three apartments on Gillian’s
floor were out at the time and have still not been contacted.”

“Where the hell are all these people at that time of night?”

“Broadway babies,” Gregory said. “They don’t say good night till early in the morning. Quite often the milkman’s on his way.”

“Who are you supposed to be, Cole fucking Porter?” the Chief said, checking his watch again, the hint to wrap it up. “You
at least got a name for this case?”

“In keeping with the Broadway theme,” Gregory said, “we’re thinking of calling it ‘Fiddler Off the Roof.’”

A
nthony Ryan was surprised when Faye Boudreau answered the phone. He’d expected an answering machine. He’d expected the sister
of Gillian Stone to be in Arizona with the family. She told him she’d explain when he got there.

“I hope we don’t have a problem with Danny on this case,” Joe Gregory said as they drove up FDR Drive, past the UN. “First
he tells me he’s not writing this story. Next day he turns around and interviews Winters.”

“He’s writing the story,” Ryan said. “He says he owes it to Gillian. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Answer me this, pally. Why the hell would Winters’s bodyguard go to that extreme? He coulda killed him.”

“Maybe he didn’t intend for Danny to fall down that chute.”

“Yeah, and maybe it’s just a garden-variety mugging. Wouldn’t be the stupidest I ever heard of.”

“That’s true. But I figure Winters knows who Danny is; you always know the previous boyfriend. And he probably knows Gillian
ran to him on the night she was murdered. Maybe he thinks she told Danny something.”

“Like he was screwing her. I could see him worrying about that, but that’s all, because he has an airtight alibi for one
A.M.
”