Authors: Jeffrey Robinson
“We're only doing our job,” Stoyanov reminded him. “Seeing as how you don't have your Metro Card, how about, in a little while, we drive you home? At that point, would you mind if we looked around your place?”
“As a matter of fact, I would mind.” He didn't like this at all. “Why do you want to look around my place?”
“It's what we do,” Lazaro reminded him. “Most homicide victims are killed by someone they know. So we start with everybody who knew the victim and eliminate people one by one. You're not a suspect, you're someone we want to eliminate from our investigation, which, therefore, might bring us one step closer to whoever did this.”
“It wasn't me.”
“But we don't know that,” Lazaro said, “until we know that.”
“This is absolutely ridiculous. No more. You're barking up the wrong tree. I think this interview is over.”
“No problem,” Lazaro shrugged. “But the interview isn't over, it's merely postponed. It isn't actually over until we decide it's over.”
That's when Stoyanov's cell phone rang. He took the call, hung up, and said
to Belasco, “The CCTV monitoring room. We need to take a look at some things. Can you show us where it is?”
Belasco took them through the fire station shortcut into the main hall and then upstairs to the monitoring room. Two plainclothes officers, one of them considerably older than the other, were sitting with Riordan and the CCTV security guy on duty. Lazaro, Stoyanov and Belasco crowded into the narrow space behind them.
“This is Friday,” the older guy said. “It's the hallway in front of Mrs. Essenbach's front door.”
The main screen showed Antonia and Tommy coming to her door and being let in.
“You know these people?” Lazaro asked.
“Her name is Antonia Lawrence. She works for the company. He's Tommy Seasons.”
“The actor?”
“Yes.”
Riordan volunteered, “But he shouldn't be in the building. He's on a banned list.”
“And who's this?” the older officer asked as the shot changed to a man stepping out of Mrs. Essenbach's apartment and giving her a long, deep kiss before leaving.
“Don't know,” Belasco said.
“Take another look.” The shot changed to the residents' lobby as the man walked out.
“Never saw him before.”
“And this? Watch. The woman and the man leave. Then someone else shows up.”
It was Carlos Vela. He and Mrs. Essenbach seemed to be having a brief but heated discussion at her door.
Riordan said, “That man was banned and Pierre unbanned him.”
“The vicuna coat?” Belasco said. “It's upstairs. Vela didn't steal anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“We found it in her closet, where it always was.”
Riordan turned to Lazaro. “That true?”
“That's true,” he said, “but you two ladies can argue about it on your own time.” He tapped the older officer on the shoulder. “What else you got?”
“There's this on Friday,” the older officer continued. The shot in the food court showed Mrs. Essenbach at the table with David Cove. “But watch what happens when we enlarge it and run it slow.”
Someone moved in front of the table where they were eating, stopped for a second with something in his hand, then quickly moved away.
“A cell phone,” the sergeant said. “He used it to take a photo.”
Belasco didn't understand. “Why?”
“Good question,” the older officer said. “Someone takes her picture secretly . . . and the next day she turns up dead? We'd like to know why, too.” He motioned to the security guy to change the shot. “This is Friday after midnight. Recognize anyone?”
A man came into the garage from the street, got into the service elevator, and went up to twenty-four. He then transferred into one of the residence elevators and rode up to forty-two. There, he knocked on Mrs. Essenbach's door and went inside. Two hours later, he left, taking the same route down and out of the building.
Belasco nodded. “He's the guy from the box of photos. The ex-elevator operator, Tomas Tejeda.”
The older officer said, “There's something else we want you to see.”
A shot from the camera in the lobby, time-coded Saturday, 12:51 p.m., showed Belasco and Mrs. Essenbach speaking, and before she walked away, she put her hand on his arm affectionately.
I
T WAS
well after seven that evening when the two detectives drove Belasco home.
In the car, Lazaro said, “You need to come clean about your personal relationship with the victim.”
“I did not have a relationship with the victim,” Belasco insisted. “Everything was strictly business. There was no personal relationship.”
“That video of you and her in the lobby . . .”
“I did not have a personal relationship with her.”
When they got to his place, he reluctantly brought them inside. “You wanted to look around . . . be my guest.”
“Actually, that probably won't be necessary,” Stoyanov said. “But the dark suit you were wearing yesterday. We'd like to borrow it.”
“What for?”
“Gun residue.”
He snapped, “I said to you that I had nothing to do with . . .”
“Then why would you mind?” Lazaro asked.
Belasco glared at the two men, turned, walked into his bedroom, took his suit from yesterday out of his closet and handed it to Stoyanov on the hanger. “Anything else? Underwear? Socks? Toothbrush?”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” Lazaro said. “We'll be in touch.”
“I'm sure you will.” Belasco saw them out.
Annoyed with them and tired from having wasted his entire day going through this, he walked back into his bedroom and emptied his pockets, putting
his wallet, some change, his keys and his BlackBerry on the dresser. And right there, under the piece of paper that listed the prices of paintings on show at a gallery on Madison Avenue, he found his Metro Card.
T
he party was in full swing.
There must have been two dozen people in Ricky's apartment, some of them drinking, some of them sitting on the floor getting stoned.
Music was blaring, and at least one young womanâa redhead whom Ricky had never seen beforeâwas already half-naked.
“You can't let her be the only one.” A very stoned Mikey Glass was going up to every other woman in the room. “You know how embarrassing it is to be the only naked person in a room? Trust me, I know. But . . . two naked people . . . that makes it so much easier for everyone else . . . so would you please step out of your clothes . . .”
Ricky was parading through the living room, showing everyone his NASA countdown clock. “Look at that . . .” It was moving down from 17:17:49 . . . “Seventeen hours plus value-added tax.”
“Only that many hours left, Rick?” Some woman asked. “How are you going to celebrate?”
“We're doing it now.” He kissed her full on the mouth, and she put her arms around him and kissed him back.
“We only have . . .” He looked at his countdown clock . . . “. . . seventeen hours, sixteen minutes, and twelve seconds. Then, like on New Year's Eve when it reaches midnight . . . we can start celebrating from the beginning.” He kissed her again. “Four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, one second . . . look . . . only seventeen hours, fifteen minutes, and fifty-nine seconds to go . . .”
Joey stepped out of his bedroom with a young blonde woman who was laughing nonstop.
Mikey walked up to her. “Don't let Wendy be the only one . . .”
“Who's Wendy?”
He pointed to the half-naked woman. “Sharon, over there.”
“I thought you said her name was Wendy.”
“The left one is Wendy, the right one is Sharon. What do you call yours?”
Laughing, she yanked up her sweater and, braless, showed him a small tattoo on the side of each of her breasts. “Left . . . and right.”
“How cool is that,” Mikey said, helping her out of her sweater.
“Hey,” Joey objected, “this is my new girlfriend.”
“No, pal,” Mikey insisted, “this woman's left and right belongs to the ages.” He took her hand and began parading her around the room, showing everyone her tattoos.
The phone rang. After someone answered it, Ricky asked, “Who was it?”
The person who answered it shouted back, “Whoever it was.”
Ricky nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
A couple of minutes later, the doorbell rang and in walked King Windsor and his girlfriend Tyne. Ricky shouted out his name and went to kiss her hello, full on the mouth.
“Hey man,” King hugged Ricky. “We got us a problem. Where's Billy?”
“Who?”
“Billy. The cat.”
“Oh yeah . . . he went to live on a farm.”
King was shocked. “He's not here? I've got to take him back.”
“You can't take Billy back,” Ricky reminded King, “you gave him to me.”
“Well, I've got to take him back, don't I? That's why I came here.” King looked at Tyne. “Go find him, luv.”
“Billy don't live here,” Ricky insisted. “He lives on a farm . . . sort of . . . I took him there me-self.”
“Well, then,” King towered over him, “you've got to take us there bleeding fast âcause the bloke who lost him wants him back.”
“What bloke who lost him?”
“Yeah, that bloke. So where's this farm?”
Ricky pointed toward the park. “There.”
“Where? Central bloody fucking Park?”
“Yeah.”
Tyne looked at Ricky, “You can't turn a bleeding cat like that loose . . .”
“We've got to find him,” King said. “Let's go, right now.”
“I can't, can I,” he objected, “not with all me-guests here. After the party. It's only going to last another . . .” He showed them the countdown clock . . . “sixteen hours . . .”
“I'm warning you mate,” King shoved a finger in Ricky's chest.
“Can't leave, can I, not with this thing.”
“Find yourself a designated driver, like you call âem, and let's go.”
Realizing he didn't have much of a choice, Ricky looked around, saw Joey making out with some woman, didn't want to interrupt, then spotted Mikey.
“Do me a favor mate, I've got to run out . . . take off your right shoe and socks . . . wear this thing for me for half an hour, one hour tops.”
“Sure Ricky,” Mikey fell onto the floor.
Ricky sat down opposite him, got Mikey to twist his foot the proper way, and slipped the ankle bracelet off his leg and onto Mikey's.
“Half-hour, one hour tops,” Ricky assured him, then turned to the nearest woman. “Do me a favor luv, take care of my mate Mikey here until I get back. One hour tops.”
Mikey said to the woman, “See those two women there who don't have most of their clothes on? You know how embarrassing it is to be the only two? Trust me, I know. But if there were three . . .”
Ricky put his shoe and sock back onâ“Need to grab my disguise . . .”âfound sunglasses and a baseball cap, then stopped in the kitchen for a paper bag. “Something to put Billy in.”
“Great,” King said, “let's go,” and the three of them left.
The woman standing with Mikey decided, why not, and started to take off her clothes when Mikey grabbed her hand and asked, “Have you ever been naked with a television star in a rock star's bedroom?” He led her inside to Ricky's bedroom and locked the door behind them.
A
FTER THE WOMAN
fell asleep, Mikey came out, looked around and saw there were at least six women not wearing tops.
He proclaimed, “I'm dead. I've gone to boob heaven.”
The doorbell rang.
“Somebody get that,” he said, but no one was paying any attention to himâ“Too many boobs in one room are very distracting,” he decidedâso he opened the door himself.
A young girl was standing there. “Is Joey here?”
“He is,” Mikey said. “But no one can come in if they're still wearing a top.”
“What?”
“No tops. No bras. Sorry, that's the price of admission.”
“I want to see Joey . . .”
“If you're down to your bra, you can see him. But only see him. I'll point him out. But if you want to come in and actually speak with him . . .”
She stared at Mikey. “Please tell Joey . . .”
“Bra,” he said, then started clapping, “bra . . . bra . . . bra . . .”