Triple cross, p.14
Triple Cross, page 14
Chapter
47
Detective Parks’s jaw stayed set as she pulled over onto the shoulder of a road.
“Suzanne Liu tell you that?” she demanded.
“She told me she called you the other day and you hung up on her,” I said.
“Damn straight I hung up on her. She all but called me a whore. I mean, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. She slept with the guy all the time!”
I held up both hands. “I didn’t know that and I’m not making any judgments here.”
“Well, I hope the hell you do, Dr. Cross! My reputation is at stake!”
“I’m just running down leads, same as you would do in this situation. Did you sleep with him?”
Parks took a deep breath. “For almost two years. Thomas has…he has a way of making you fall in love with him and not think too badly of him when he dumps you.”
“You called Tull after Liu called you.”
“First time in two years. But I thought he should know what his former editor was saying about him.”
“He threatened her,” I said. “I heard the recording.”
“I certainly had nothing to do with it if he did.”
“Tull never mentioned the affair in the book.”
“Thank God. My mother would have been mortified.”
“I’m sorry, but did you know Tull also had affairs with the female detectives in Electric and Noon in Berlin?”
Parks swallowed hard. “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Like I said, he has a way of making women fall in love with him.”
After that, she took me to the site where the third Charleston doctor had been murdered, an area of big homes, all with docks that reached far out across the tidal flats to the Wando River.
“Peter Mason—an ear, nose, and throat specialist—died out there,” Parks said, pointing to the T at the end of the nearest dock. “Beaten to death with an oar. The last two murder scenes are a few miles north. We believe the killer came in off the river via the docks.”
“And Tull was here for all three of those investigations?”
“He was.”
“In the book, Tull says it was your idea to change the course of the investigation and start looking into the doctors’ medical-malpractice suits. Is that right? Or did he suggest it?”
Detective Parks stared into the middle distance for a long time before replying. “He did. It was his idea.” Tull, she said, reasoned that the killings could all be revenge for shoddy medical work. Sure enough, they found that all five victims had been accused of medical malpractice on multiple occasions.
“How did you get from there to Walter Stevenson? Was that also Tull?”
Parks’s face looked pained as she struggled internally. “I guess you could say it was Thomas who first brought Dr. Stevenson to our attention. But we were all instantly suspicious once we saw his depositions.”
Dr. Walter Stevenson, also of Charleston, was in his late sixties, a retired physician who made extra money as an expert witness in medical-malpractice suits. In fact, Dr. Stevenson had testified against each of the five doctors, all of whom had been deemed justified in their actions at the end of court proceedings and suffered little or no penalties.
It turned out that Dr. Stevenson’s beloved wife, Mirabelle, had died from a botched medical procedure, and he had not received a dime after he sued.
“There’s a motive,” I said.
“It was there all along, but only Thomas sensed it,” Parks said. “You know, despite what happened between us, you have to give him credit. He saw it all.”
“Which is why I’m here,” I said. “What’s the chance Tull was involved somehow?”
The detective frowned. “You mean, like aiding and abetting?”
“Or framing.”
She snorted. “Well, Stevenson’s still claiming he was framed. But he’s also quick to condemn ‘doctors who are all about business before patients and get away with it.’ Look, the evidence was there. And I certainly saw no link between Thomas and the evidence we found in Stevenson’s house.”
I was quiet a moment. “Did you see any differences between what you know happened during the investigation and Tull’s version? As you saw it, I mean?”
Parks thought about that. “Well, he did twist a few things and omit some others, I guess. And Thomas was always pushing the spotlight toward me.”
“Did you ever call him on that? On not taking credit?”
“Once,” she replied, looking into the distance again. “After the book was published and shortly before we broke up.”
“And what did he say?”
“That it wasn’t his job to shine, that he was supposed to let the characters shine. He said the writer’s job was to disappear, to be an invisible hand at work.”
Chapter
48
Manhattan
In the rear of a black utility van parked down the street from Paula Watkins’s fabulous double brownstone on the Upper East Side, NYPD Detective Rosella Salazar groaned and shifted uncomfortably on one of the metal folding chairs.
“I never should have let you talk me into this,” Detective Salazar said, rubbing her stomach. “And I’m getting kicked in the ribs.”
Bree felt bad. “What else can I do? The DA wouldn’t give you the wiretap.”
“Because there was not enough evidence.”
“Well, in the end it doesn’t matter. Luster gave his consent to the recording, volunteered to wear a wire for his own purposes. We’re just listening in.”
Salazar shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to hear.”
“Something that proves there is sexual trafficking and maybe slavery going on in there tonight,” Bree said.
“And then?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
Looking annoyed, the detective said, “I’m giving you an hour once your friend is inside. If he can get inside.”
“My money’s on Luster,” Bree said, getting up and going to the tinted glass window at the back of the van.
She trained binoculars down the street toward the home of Frances Duchaine’s second in command, saw town cars and limousines disgorging guests. There seemed to be several types in this crowd—men in their twenties, men in their fifties, and women in their twenties.
Soon enough, Phillip Henry Luster in a chic black suit climbed from a town car; he was followed by a tall, lanky, tawny-haired man in his twenties. Blessed with GQ looks, he was dressed in gray high-water slacks, no socks, black shoes, and a blue blazer with a starched white shirt, collar open.
“Luster’s here with Brad Jenkins,” Bree told Salazar. “We should be picking his audio up any—”
The closed-band receiver squawked. Over the sound of the breeze and other voices, they heard Luster say, “After you, Brad.”
Bree made sure she was recording, returned to the rear window, and saw Luster and his date climb the stairs and disappear inside. The van was filled with the sounds of a cocktail party under way.
“My God, I didn’t think Paula had so many friends,” Luster said.
“Or enemies,” Jenkins said. “She believes in keeping them close.”
“Does she?”
“It’s why she agreed to let you be my date, Phillip.”
“Ha-ha.”
Bree noticed a limo pulling up outside. A man in white robes and an Arab kaffiyeh headdress climbed out with two men who looked like bodyguards.
“Middle Eastern heavy hitter going in,” Bree said.
Salazar rubbed her belly. “I’ve got a heavy hitter of my own right here.”
Over the receiver, Luster said, “Gin and tonic, please. And a Shirley Temple for my young friend.”
“You’re such an amusing ass, Phillip,” Jenkins said. “Sorry, make that an old-fashioned, please. A double.”
“A double?” Luster said. “Are you compensating for something, Brad?”
“Fortifying something,” his date said. “Victor says this night might make or break my career. Especially the after-party.”
“What after-party?” Bree said.
The NYPD detective sat forward to listen.
“What after-party?” Luster asked.
“I don’t know, but Victor said it’s supposed to be intimate. A chance to connect.”
“Like an orgy?”
“Oh God, I hope not,” Jenkins said. “I’m not up for that kind of scene on a Wednesday night.”
“Your drinks, gentlemen,” someone said.
“Bless you,” Jenkins said.
“Phillip?” A woman’s voice.
The sound of ice tinkling against the side of a glass came over the receiver before Luster said, “Oh, hello, Paula. Nice gathering for midweek.”
Watkins said, “I try to make my life a celebration no matter what day it is.”
“I’m sure you’ve told that to Oprah on numerous occasions,” Luster said. “I’m just happy to be in your presence again, Paula. Twice in one week. Imagine that.”
“Yes,” Watkins said slowly. “Lucky you for knowing Brad.”
“Lucky me. He is a doll, isn’t he?”
“If you like your dolls that young.”
“And I do. Frances coming?”
“Frances is in bed in Greenwich, fighting a bug she picked up at the fundraiser.”
“Poor dear,” Luster said. “Send her my best, will you?”
“Of course,” Watkins said. “Enjoy the party, Phillip, but don’t forget that you have work tomorrow, and at your age you’ll need a lot of sleep if you’re going to try to keep up with a Ferrari like Brad. Ta-ta!”
Chapter
49
“Ta-ta,” Luster replied, then cleared his throat and said in a low voice, “Oh, the creative things I could call that woman. I hope you heard all that, Ms. Stone. I’m in and accepted, but I have not been invited to the after-party.”
Bree wished she could respond to the fashion designer over the wire. She sent him a text: Hearing you loud and clear. Try to get an invite.
She and Salazar listened as Luster weaved through the crowd. “There’s more beauty here than on South Beach. It’s like a delicatessen for well-scrubbed skin.” He paused. “What? No, I’m not going to try to get an invite to the after-party. You heard Paula’s subtext. I’m expected to have two drinks, nibble some gourmet tasties, and be gone before the real fun begins.”
Salazar said, “Tell Luster to take selfies around anyone he finds interesting so we can identify them later.”
Bree texted him the orders.
“That I can do,” Luster said.
For the next forty minutes, Bree and Salazar listened as the fashion designer mingled with people in the crowd, trying to engage in small talk with some of the older men and largely being rebuffed when he quizzed them about their backgrounds.
Luster said, “You’re not picking this up, I suppose, but there’s definitely a sense of lechery in the air in here.”
Bree texted, What about Victor? Or Katherine?
After a few moments, he said, “I haven’t met either of them yet, though Brad is engaged in a deep conversation with a thick-browed Russian sort at the moment. I’ll wander over.”
Salazar groaned, stood up, pushed her chair over by Bree, and sat by the rear window. “After-party or no after-party, ten minutes and I gotta go home, put my feet up.”
“Understood,” Bree said. “I’ll get you a recording of whatever you miss.”
Out the rear window, Bree saw two black Cadillac Escalades pull up in front of Watkins’s house. A big muscular man climbed out from the front passenger side of each car, both with their hands in their black leather jackets.
“More guests. These are wearing body armor, I think,” Bree said.
“Let me take a look,” the detective said. Bree handed her the binoculars. Salazar peered through them as each bodyguard opened the rear passenger door of a vehicle. A man climbed out of each one.
“Holy Mother,” Salazar said after a moment. “Will you look at that!”
“What? Who are they?”
The police detective did not reply, just kept studying the scene until the two men had gone inside and the bodyguards had been driven away. Then she lowered the binoculars in wonder.
“The guy from the first car? That’s Petro Ivanovic, reputed head of a violent Russian crew based in New York. I learned about him when I was involved in an investigation of Russian organized crime in Queens. The brush-cut tough from the second car is Rory Flynn, runs the Irish mob out of Brooklyn.”
Bree threw back her head and laughed. “Are you kidding me? Mobsters at Paula Watkins’s house?”
“And maybe at an after-party at Paula’s house,” Salazar said. “God, I wish we’d known those two were going to be here. The DA would have been all over—”
The receiver squawked behind them. Luster said, “It’s him—Victor. I’m sure of it. He and Brad are talking very, very intently.”
Bree texted, About what?
Salazar, who was still watching the street, said, “Who’s this now?”
Bree looked up in time to see a figure in a dark hoodie leave the sidewalk and jog up the stairs to Watkins’s front door. The figure stood there a moment, pivoted, then jogged down the stairs, back up the sidewalk, and around the corner.
Salazar said, “What was that about?”
Before Bree could reply, Luster said, “How would I know what Brad and Victor are talking about? It’s not like I can just worm my way in.”
Why not? Bree texted.
As she was about to hit Send, Luster said, “What the hell? Oh my God, no!”
The lights in Paula Watkins’s home died.
Nervous laughter poured from the radio receiver. Luster’s voice shook as he said, “I think that guy had a—”
They heard a woman scream, four loud thuds, and more shouting and screaming.
“What the hell’s going on in there?” Salazar said, lurching to her feet and grabbing the handles to the van’s rear doors.
Luster bellowed over the mayhem, “They’re shooting people in here! Help, Bree! Help, Detective Salazar! I’m calling Mayday, for God’s sake!”
Chapter
50
Bree and Salazar burst out the rear of the van and raced to Paula Watkins’s dark townhome. The detective lagged a little behind, holding her stomach with one hand and her police radio with the other.
“Shots fired!” she roared into the radio. “I repeat, shots fired at six East Sixty-Third, the residence of Paula Watkins. Need backup and ambulances at six East Sixty-Third! Now!”
Through the windows of Watkins’s home, Bree saw the slashing of cell phone flashlights and heard more screaming and cries of terror. She bounded up the front stairs, drawing her pistol.
The door and handle were moving but the door wasn’t opening; people were calling hysterically from the other side. She dug out her phone and shone the light into the locks, saw they were filled with some kind of glue or epoxy. “The door’s locked from the outside!” Bree shouted. “We’ve got police on the way. Get to the front windows and open them if you can!”
Salazar reached the bottom of the staircase. She was gasping for air. Frenzied guests were at the windows, but the windows appeared locked as well.
Someone finally threw a table through a window to the right of the door. Detective Salazar shouted, “NYPD! Where are the shooters?”
A terrified Phillip Henry Luster stuck his head out the window and shouted, “We don’t know! We couldn’t see a damn thing!”
Sirens wailed at them from multiple directions and quickly after, patrol cars were skidding to a stop in front of 6 East Sixty-Third Street. Salazar ordered them to seal the perimeter of the town house. “No one leaves unless they need immediate medical help,” the shaken detective said. “No one, not until we figure out who was shooting and who was shot. And get Con Edison on the line. I want the lights on in there before anyone enters.”
Twenty minutes later, media trucks were lined up at the end of the block. The lights went on in Watkins’s house and the screaming inside began all over again. Firemen broke down the front door with a battering ram.
Traumatized guests, many spattered with blood, streamed slowly from the residence. NYPD detectives and patrol officers began sorting and interviewing them.
Salazar looked at Bree. “I’m sorry, Chief, but I can’t let you in there.”
“I understand,” Bree said. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“Get the recording of Luster from the van. I want it in hand when I explain to my chief and the DA why I was first on the scene.”
“Of course,” Bree said.
The pregnant detective took a deep breath, climbed the stairs, and disappeared inside.
As Bree walked back toward the van she’d rented, she found herself suddenly trembling with adrenaline and on the verge of hyperventilating. Who was shooting in there? The sheikh’s bodyguards? The two mobsters?
She sat in the back of the van, forcing herself to breathe deep and slow, until she heard Luster talking over the receiver again. She crossed to it as the fashion designer said, “Brad, I so need to get out of here. I’m feeling claustrophobic and nauseous.”
Jenkins, sounding equally shaken, said, “You heard them, Phillip. Stay where we are until we’re told we’re good to leave.”
“I’m good right now!” Luster shot back.
Bree texted him: I’m in the van again. I can hear you. I know this is rough, but tell me what you see.
In a wavering voice a few moments later, Luster said, “There are at least nine people we can see dead in here. Paula’s one of them. So is Ari Bernstein, the hedge-fund hack. They’re on their backs about twenty feet from us. Both were shot between the eyes. And Brad’s contact, Victor, is dead, along with a woman I don’t know next to him. I don’t recognize the others, but one looks like a sheikh of some sort. There are two men dead near him and two others by the bar that someone said were known mobsters.”
